As for films' leading men, some are boys (Fort Wayne Journal Gazette)

(KRT) - Sith, Sith, Sith. That's the big movie story of the week, and probably the next few weeks. What happened to "Kingdom of Heaven"? After a lukewarm No. 1 opening, the much publicized Ridley Scott Crusades epic is sinking in the box office ratings. Last weekend, it earned $3.

4 million, bringing its total to around $41 million, barely scratching the $130 million budget.

Are audiences so saturated with present-day turmoil in the Middle East they can't get excited about what happened there in the 12th century?

I thought "Kingdom of Heaven" was pretty good, a better film than Scott's epic "Gladiator." The Christian-Muslim conflict was handled fairly, with heroes and villains on both sides. The battle scenes were impressive, if you like that sort of thing and on occasion I do. The computer-generated bits stood out more crisply than the muddled horizons of "Gladiator." Yet, something was missing - Russell Crowe.

Crowe earned one of "Gladiator's" five Academy Awards when he carried the film to acclaim and rewards.

Orlando Bloom acquitted himself nicely as "Kingdom's" hero. But his slim shoulders can't handle the load.

It illustrates something that's been bothering me about today's leading men, something the New Yorker's Anthony Lane expressed beautifully in his "Kingdom of Heaven" review.

Bloom, he says, "joins the list of Hollywood stars, headed by Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire, who remain, whatever the squeals of their fan club, a bunch of kids. As with Tom Cruise, the uberkid, there's something ungrounded about them, a reluctance to verse themselves in the ways of the world." Crowe is a movie star, Chris Rock said in his Oscar monologue, Tobey Maguire a boy in tights. I love Maguire's soulfulness. But "Spider-man" works because they cast for Peter Parker, the confused kid.

In "Kingdom," the contrast is clear in any scene Bloom shares with Liam Neeson, eminently believable and a grown-up. When his character dies, air just oozes out of the frame.

"Gangs of New York" showcased a similar lesson when DiCaprio - and I don't mean to pick on him - was swept away by Daniel Day-Lewis' outsized villain. (The versatile Day-Lewis proved in "Last of the Mohicans" that he could be heroic and sexy in a loincloth - a tough feat.)As the likes of Crowe, Neeson and Denzel Washington age, I don't quite see Cruise, and Brad Pitt taking their place the way Robert Mitchum and Humphrey Bogart gave way to Steve McQueen, Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier.

It's not that new grown-ups aren't out there. Many - William Petersen, Kiefer Sutherland and Anthony LaPaglia, for starters - have found a place on television.

Maybe at my age, I'm destined to be ignored in the youth market, where my "real men" are judged over the hill and Jack Black gets his name above the title.