Review of The Passion of the Christ (2004) by Samuel R — 11 Jul 2012

The Passion of the Christ is a well-directed torture-porn film of the highest order, concealed behind a message and a faith-based bias. At its' heart, though, when stripped of the message writer / director Mel Gibson is conveying (in the most violent way possible, mind you), The Passion is nothing more than a lengthy torture scene, bookended with endless slo-mo shots, a few bizarrely placed boo-scares, and a poorly written prologue.

Simply put, my personal feelings aside, this is a really, really bad movie. There's no character development, and there really is no dramatic arc or story whatsoever. Jesus gets betrayed, captured, tortured, and killed, pretty much in that order.

The few scenes featuring Mary (Jesus' mother) and Mary Magdalene feel perfunctory and tacked on, and seem like they came from a different movie-the transitions are awkwardly handled. The scenes with Satan are oddly out of place, and seem to come out of nowhere.

And the torture scenes are shot in the most brutal way imaginable, with little regard for anything outside of horrifying the audience with the sheer brutality on display. If anything, the makeup and visual effects are impressive, but that's damning with faint praise-you couldn't make this movie with lousy makeup, because people would realize what a piece of shit it is.

The dialogue, in Aramaic, Latin, and Hebrew, is really, really bad; like, cartoon bad-but people can't tell because they're reading it, not saying it out loud (Try this...you'll see what I mean).

The performance by Jim Caviezel is understated and bland, although its' hard to convey emotion through that much caro syrup when the cameraman wants to focus more on the excessive makeup on your back, or the guy who's whipping you senseless.

I'm a firm believer that a movie about Jesus could be a showcase for a wonderful performance, but this movie isn't really interested in Jesus' life-or any aspect of his personal character, for that matter.

Technically adept though it is, this film is still a missed opportunity to do anything outside of its' severely (and needlessly) limited scope, which is a damn shame.