A triumphant masterpiece. Is Gibson this millennium’s Saint Paul?
The Passion of the Christ (2004)
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Reviews Counted:259
Fresh:129
Rotten:130
Average Rating:5.9/10
Consensus: The graphic details of Jesus' torture make the movie tough to sit through and obscure whatever message it is trying to convey.
Theatrical Release:Feb 25, 2004 Wide
Box Office: $370,203,632
Synopsis: The Passion of The Christ is a film about the last twelve hours of Jesus of Nazareth's life. The film opens in the Garden of Olives (Gethsemane) where Jesus has gone to pray after the Last Supper.... The Passion of The Christ is a film about the last twelve hours of Jesus of Nazareth's life. The film opens in the Garden of Olives (Gethsemane) where Jesus has gone to pray after the Last Supper. Jesus resists Satan's temptations. Betrayed by Judas Iscariot, Jesus is arrested and taken back to within the city walls of Jerusalem where the leaders of the Pharisees confront him with accusations of blasphemy and his results in a condemnations of death. Jesus is brought before Pilate, the Roman Governor of Palestine, who listens to the accusations leveled at him by the Pharisees. Realizing he is confronting a political conflict, Pilate defers to King Herod in the matter. Herod returns Jesus to Pilate who gives the crowd a choice between Jesus and the criminal Barabbas. The crowd chooses to have Barabbas set free and to condemn Jesus. Jesus is handed over to the Roman soldiers and flagellated. Unrecognizable now, he is brought back before Pilate, who presents him to the crowd as if to say "is this not enough?" It is not. Pilate washes his hands of the entire dilemma, ordering his men to do as the crowd wishes. Jesus is presented with the cross and is ordered to carry it through the streets of Jerusalem all the way up to Golgotha. On Golgotha, Jesus is nailed to the cross and undergoes his last temptation -- the fear that he has been abandoned by his Father. He overcomes his fear, looks at Mary, his Holy Mother, and makes the pronouncement which only she can fully understand, "it is accomplished." He then dies: "into Thy hands I commend my Spirit." At the moment of his death, nature itself overturns. -- © Newmarket Films [More]
Starring: James Caviezel, Maia Morgenstern, Monica Bellucci, Mattia Sbragia
Starring: James Caviezel, Maia Morgenstern, Monica Bellucci, Mattia Sbragia, Claudia Gerini, Luca Lionello, Hristo Shopov
Director: Mel Gibson
Director: Mel Gibson
Screenwriter: Mel Gibson, Benedict Fitzgerald
Producer: Bruce Davey, Stephen McEveety
Composer: John Debney
Studio: Newmarket Films
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Release:
Feb 17, 2009
Reviews for The Passion of the Christ
To put so much time, effort and money into something that's ultimately so lifeless seems like a waste to me.
I found the film more numbing than moving, as if the transformation it charted was not from human to divine, but from man to carcass.
Instead of being moved by Christ's suffering, or awed by his sacrifice, I felt abused by a filmmaker intent on punishing an audience, for who knows what sins.
Gibson's passion is all over this film...but his resorting to mawkish, superficial tactics blows the tone off-course from time to time
Might be mistaken for an instructional video on meat-tenderizing techniques for cannibal chefs. Mel's a muscular Christian without a philosophical bone in his head.
Strangely remote and uninvolving on both emotional and spiritual levels.
Saturated with vengeance, betrayal, and melodrama, Mel Gibson's sadistic take on Jesus’ final twelve hours screams bloody murder.
'Bien filmada, mejor actuada y sólidamente dirigida. Vale la pena todos y cada uno de los centavos de su producción y del costo del boleto de entrada.'
Emotional, violent, extreme and very gory, Mel Gibson's controversial The Passion of the Christ is a difficult and grotesque experience for most viewers.
Working with premier cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, Gibson effectively hurls us into Christ's living nightmare, creating a mesmerizing twilight zone that is creepy and utterly unforgettable.
Overall, it's just another movie, and it can be dismissed with the same short critique we so often apply to other movies: The book was better.
As a religious experience, The Passion of the Christ makes a damn fine movie.
No other film in history has even attempted such a concentrated interpretation of these unimaginable events let alone do so with what I call such reverential explicitness.
A gripping, powerful motion picture -- arguably the most forceful depiction of Jesus' death ever to be committed to film.
The movie is a compendium of tortures that would horrify the regulars at an S&M club.
Beautiful, violent -- and also funny for all the wrong reasons, and boring.
Serves as a powerful condemnation of any organized religion that aspires to governance or allow clerics to preach contempt and whip sheepish followers into a frenzy.
As a film it is nothing but a long third act with no story and, most importantly, NO character development for anyone other than Pilate.
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