rkrause

When The Passion of the Christ was in theaters I couldn't find anyone willing to go see it with me. I then decided to wait till it was available to rent. That way if I felt the need to criticize the movie in my own special way the rest of the movie going audience wouldn't lynch me. Only now do I realize how correct I was in my decision to wait.

What the Passion amounts to is nothing more than two hours of a man being spat upon, beaten, and flayed like a piece of meat while others look on. There is nothing remotely spiritual about what is shown, only brief flashbacks to the last supper and the Sermon on the Mount are shown to give any religious feeling. While Jesus is portrayed in his usual pacifistic role other characters are not so lucky. Pilate is reduced to a spineless coward to afraid to make a decision that he turns to his fictional Christian sympathizing wife Claudia for advice. Nowhere in any religious text or historical documents have I ever heard of such a women. It seems she was added to make Pilate less of a villain, which is a false assumption. Satan is portrayed not as a beautiful seductive woman or a charming man but as a bald pale faced figure which makes even less sense.

Perhaps the biggest controversy is whether or not this film is Anti-Semitic. I cannot say for certain if it is or not, people will see what they want to see either way. However I can understand how such accusations can be made. The majority of Jesus' suffering comes at the hands of the Jews, who spit on, beat, and taunt him throughout the movie. The Romans on the other hand merely sit back and watch only a hand full of Roman guards taunt or beat Jesus leaving much of the work to the Jewish crowd. It seems as though Gibson dealt out the responsibility quite lopsided in his production and I can see how many could construe that as Anti-Semitism. Whether or not it was intentional is anyone's guess.

In the end though The Passion is a over the top pretentious and self serving religious flick. Hardly worthy of praise of such classic spiritual movies like The Last Temptation of Christ, King of Kings, or The Greatest Story Ever Told. These movies are critically acclaimed because they not only have great acting and production values but because they focused on the importance of Jesus' teachings and the way he lived his life. To focus on nothing more than on how he was executed is not the way one should base their religious faith. Love the man and his teachings don't focus on the way he was butchered.

There are certain stories that cannot be retold or re-witten, the Illiad is one of those stories. The miniseries "Helen of Troy" bastardizes the epic poem Homer wrote and distorts the true nature of its characters. The main characters of the Illiad are Achillies, Agamemnon, and to a lesser extent Hector. Paris is a supporting character, important, but supporting. This miniseries makes Paris one of the main characters and pushes the true stars asside. The series also makes the Greeks the vilains, as well as war mongering barbarians who do not appreciate women, beauty, or the finer things life has to offer. This coupled with the fact that Achillies, the hero of the Illiad, is reduced from a tragic heroic figure, into a brash, loud, bald, bellowing monster, when that is so far from the true nature of his character. Important events are omitted, such as the fight between Agamemnon and Achillies, the death of his best friend Patroclus, and many others as well. What we are left with is a one sided view at the Trojan War and a load of fluff. I was truely disappointed with this miniseries not only because it ruined one of my favorite mythological stories and epic poems, but it strayed so far from the true story it gives such a false impression of what happened.

As a fan of the horror genre and of the Resident Evil video game series I was looking forward to the theatrical adaption. However after viewing the movie I can only mourn what could have been. The majority of the movie is seen without the presence of any monsters and the ones that show up are few in number. One Licker a single pack of Cerberus zombie dogs and a few dozen Zombies, does little to impress this viewer. There is little character development and the performances themselves are hardly commendable. As for the amount of gore or in this case the lack there of it greatly hinders the movie itself. For an R rated horror movie this film had a serious lack in carnage and bloodshed. And if the title of Resident Evil is to be used the movie using it needs to have a certain quotient of violence and gore this film does not. In the end we have a movie with a big budget and fancy special effects that fail to cover up the fact that this is one lightweight horror movie. Not recomended at all