Lord almighty----Diogo Morgado as Jesus Christ from being labeled a prophet to being crucified in the religious epic Son Of God
I would like to preface this review by telling anyone who is reading this that I am an agnostic. I have never believed in organized religion or religion in general and the existence of God and Jesus simply don't matter to me. If you haven't already closed this review in anger and still want to hear what I have to say about the film despite my beliefs, here is my actual review of the film.
Despite my beliefs, I was oddly looking forward to Son Of God. Just from the trailer, it looked well made and fairly interesting from a filmmaking perspective. Now that I've seen it in its entirety, I can say I was partially right. This is a very cool looking film with a poor man's Lawrence Of Arabia visual style to it. Despite I used poor man's in that sentence...the fact that a modern day film I see would even get mentioned in the same sentence as Lawrence Of Arabia especially when referring to visual style is a huge compliment to the film. However, therein lies a lot of the problem I had with this film. This is a great looking film in which, as a non-believer, I didn't care about the subject matter at all. This means that I could very easily look at the film from a filmmaker's perspective but all chance to look at the film from a story perspective is thrown completely out the window for me.
Son Of God could easily be chalked up as The Mild Passion Of The Christ. This is a significantly less gory recreation of the crucification of Jesus and that part only takes up about twenty minutes of the film. This is also a sugar coated recreation of what Jesus went through while The Passion Of The Christ showed that Mel Gibson obviously was very enthusiastic about Jesus but wasn't afraid to get down and dirty in showing his pain and suffering. However, this is miles above Gibson's film in grand filmmaking. There are numerous shots from co-writer and director Christopher Spencer that simply must be seen on the big screen to be believed. In fact, this is the type of film that I would say benefits greatly from watching it in a theater. Also, lead actor Diogo Morgado is really good at portraying Jesus. He brings a charisma that is perfect for playing an all powerful prophet but he never gets too much into the Jesus schtick.
I admit that as I sit here typing this review, I can't say what I'm saying is particularly intelligent nor will it likely carry any weight. As I mentioned, I was just too simply not wrapped up in the subject matter to look at the film from many angles. This is the most unsubtle history lesson of a film that I have seen in quite some time. The filmmakers don't try to pretend that this is not simply going to be a sunday school quiz guide for a lot of young boys and girls. Also, since this film is based on a popular mini series "The Bible," I can't imagine this strays that far from the material in the mini series. However, I would recommend this film on the basis that it benefits largely from a big screen due to its epic story look and that Morgado is excellent in the lead role.
(3 out of 5 Stars, The film is rated PG-13 for intense and bloody depiction of The Crucifixion and for some sequences of violence)
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