Just in time for lent, this film shows up in our cinema listings. I’ve only just learned that this movie was based on the History channel’s hit show The Bible and it amazes me that they got the whole cast to redo basically the same scenes. What’s even weirder, the film is produced by Mark Burnett (genius creator of Survivor) and Roma Downey (the angel in Touched by an Angel).

Anyway, here’s my round up of Christopher Spencer (who’s made mostly documentaries)’s Son of God.

Please note that there may be spoilers. Read at your own risk.

THE STORY:

The film recounts the path Jesus (Diogo Morgado – Revenge) and his disciples took from Galilee to Jerusalem.

THE GOOD:

1. It showed the political angles involved. As somebody who grew up as a Christian and was raised on the stories of the Bible, this film provided fresh insight. The Church spends so much time telling and preaching the stories to the masses but rarely ever spends the effort to tell them in the right context. The film shows us the different points of views of all those involved, while still staying true to what it set out to do.
2. Solid performances from Greg Hicks and Adrian Schiller. I could’ve watched these two on screen forever. And ever and ever. They brought out so much depth into their characters that even though they didn’t say them out loud, all and every motivations were clear. Gregory Hicks’ Pilate was fun to watch; he showed us a non-cowering real, brutal Roman governor. Most of the stories about Pilate was just about him washing his hands off the whole thing, but here we get to see how he was forced into a corner by Adrian Schiller’s self-righteous high priest Caiaphas who’s own zealousness kept his mind closed to anything that goes against what he believed to be right.
3. Judas and Mary Magdalene had slightly different stories, which to me says that the film makers really did try to consult all available sources for the material.
4. Darwin Shaw gets special props for the extremely memorable performance as Peter. Everybody else had moments where they seemed to just be waiting for their turn to say their lines but Darwin Shaw was consistently intense in all of his scenes.
5. The gory scenes weren’t gratuitous. They were still grounded and very much reality-based. I haven’t seen Mel Gibson’s version but from what I understand, that version is infinitely more bloody than this one.

THE BAD:

1. The incredibly bad CGI. The special effects were so bad, they shouldn’t have been allowed to be shown on the small screen. Magnified about ten times, it just feels like an insult.
2. The first thirty minutes of the movie was extremely dragging. I don’t know how they chose the sequences but it seemed like they just picked random miracles from a fishbowl so there was no continuity at all.

THE UGLY:

1. Roma Downey‘s ridiculous lips. They look like they’ve been stung by bees and were very distracting because those things really look like they hurt.

All in all I quite liked Son of God. Save for the slow pacing in the beginning of the movie, it was actually quite good and most performances were very powerful. It also offers up a different perspective on a story that we’re all (I assume) familiar with, so that’s a plus.

THE VERDICT: 7.2/10. See it.

*All photos are lifted from the film’s IMDB page.