By Gary Oldman, Jacqueline Bisset, Jeremy Sisto, Armin Muller Stalhl TROY SAYS:
Good 6.8
"Provocative but endlessly talky. Good actors struggling to liven up a mostly weak script that relies heavily on dialog exposition. Invents a ton of fictional situations of wildly varying degrees of accuracy. Provides non-literal, but emotional glimpses into the characters and situations of the gospel stories. One really great confrontation scene (at 1:13:00) imagines Barabbas violently fighting Jesus.
Some examples of the poor scholarship are:
Jesus spends 31 years as a slightly stoned-looking sub-genius who makes tables for hire, then suddenly decides to move out of his Momma's house and try to get his act together.
Jesus' family can't find the money to pay their taxes;
John the Baptist sprinkles people with water.
Has a super-cool, but almost totally fictional, and theologically problematic, devil-temptation scene.
Some questionable casting.
Relies on interesting, dramatic dialog that is overly talky and under-researched. Supposes that Jesus had a strong relationship with Joseph, where the bible is silent on the matter, and the truth could be quite the opposite. Jesus is a white American who often is at a loss for words, and deeply under-informed, doesn't seem to know what's going on, and of course, as usual in these Biblical period movies, Jesus walks around talking and doing carpentry for hire in a beige dress. Recommended mainly for its important subject matter. Nowhere near as good as the classic movies about the Messiah such as Jesus Of Nazareth and King Of Kings. This one is artistically on par with the Jesus film, which is stiffer but more accurate." GENIE SAYS:
Good 6.9
βFor a biblical movie, the sexual content is a bit much for young children.β
