Review of Risen (2016) by Chris F — 14 May 2016

It's funny that this movie has 57% from critics and an 80% from the audience. The difference may reflect the beliefs of the reviewer. I'm not sure.

This is simply a movie about a very familiar story told by using a fictional story right along side it. This shouldn't alarm the faith based community. The same type of thing has been done many times with movies like Ben Hurr.

Risen is a film about the resurrection of Jesus Christ as told through the eyes of a non-believer and leader of the Roman army who is put in charge of finding the missing body of Jesus by Pilate. Believers, I think, will really enjoy this move. Atheists not so much, although they may find it interesting in some way. Rather than talking about the plot I'd like to focus on the production value of Risen. I studied film in college and as a believer myself, faith based movies have always irritated me. They tend to be low budget (many times because they are funded through individual donors rather than a major hollywood studio), they tend to be cheesy, and they tend to be plagued by poor acting from E list celebrities. It's always irritated me because, to me, it seems like God deserves better.

I hold Risen in a much higher regard than these films. It's the Lenten season and hollywood knows if they're going to put money into a faith based film and make a profit, there's a 40 day window to release it in. I'm okay with that. I'll take what I can get. Risen has an exceptionally high production value for a faith based film. It's a big budget film as compared to others in it's genre, it has superb acting from almost everyone especially the lead actor Joseph Fiennes, the effects are decent, the cinematography is beautiful, the pacing is perfect, and there is actually use of camera cranes, dollies, truck shots, drones, etc. It's honestly the best faith based movie I've seen since The Passion.

My only complaint is that I wish the movie would have utilized subtitles rather than english as we Americans get a bad wrap for that and it would have given the movie more of a global reach and greater authenticity in my opinion. Also, while it made sense that the apostles would be in good spirits because of what they have seen following the resurrection some of them came of as "campy" to me bringing a brief hint of that cheesiness from other faith based films.

Other than those minor complaints I thought the film was of extremely high production value for a faith based movie and it was fun to get lost in a fictional story that was used to tell a story you either do not believe or do believe to be true. Regardless, Risen will hold your interest and attention throughout.