Well, I finally did it. I saw the Passion of the Christ. In spite of all of the hoopla and in-theater conversions, you can classify me as distinctly unimpressed.

Objectively speaking, the movie was pretty okay. The directing was pretty good and the performances were believable (even from Caviezel, who normally can't act his way out of a wet paper bag), but the story was rather shallow. I mean, heck, we're sitting through two hours of watching a guy get tortured. The scourging scene alone seemed like it lasted 30 minutes or more. After awhile, you pretty much get the point. Other movies (usually mini-series on TV) condensed the whole death and crucifixion deal down to an hour and focused more on the meaningful half of Jesus's life, where the TAUGHT stuff.

Apparently, such trifles as philosophy and religious teaching are completely inadequate conversion techniques. All we needed to see all this time is some splattering blood and graphic torture to touch people's hearts. I didn't witness any such dramatic conversions personally, but I've heard plenty of anecdotes about people who converted because of a little blood. Hell, if it were THAT easy, they should have all joined the military after Starship Troopers.

So what makes the Passion such a "powerful" movie, when in reality it's little more than a high budget snuff film? The answer to that is because people believe that it actually happened, as depicted in the movie. "It's amazing how he suffered for us!" they say. "We must therefore blindly accept Christianity as absolutely true!"

Well, I'm not going to bother going into the accuracy and legitimacy of the Bible. I do give Mel credit for pulling together the sometimes outright contradictory Gospels into a coherent story. Based on some of the negative press, I expected some bizarre interpretation based on a rewriting of the New Testament. Afterward, I went back home, brushed the dust off the Good Book, and re-read the pertinent chapters, and saw that for the most part, he followed what it said, often word per word (often combining contradictory scenes form different Gospels, but what are you going to do?).

BUT, he went way overboard on the gore. The shockingly notorious scourging scene is the most obvious. I won't ruin the movie for you, but the Bible simply says he was scourged. It does not say he was flayed alive. I don't think that being left with exposed bone was what actually happened. After all, if it had, I think the writers would have mentioned it. Come to think of it, that was the only REAL over-the-top scene. Most of the rest seemed to be Biblically accurate, but graphic.

One thing I've never understood is how the Jews eventually ended up taking the blame for Jesus's death. It was the ROMANS who scourged him, put the crown of thorns on him, beat him up, and nailed him to the cross. Being Italian, that sounds just like what I would expect from their ethnicity. For all of the bitching from Jewish groups, they came out OK in the movie. There were plenty of 'good' Jewish characters, and the ones who went to Pilate to get Jesus killed were characterized as sort of rogue priests. The Romans were the ones who came off as pricks.

Still, it was a shallow movie. They had a few scenes of the pre-crucifixion Jesus teaching, and even one of a pre-Messianic Jesus doing carpentry. Those were the most interesting scenes of the movie. A little more of that and a little less whipping would have made the movie a lot better. He used some creative license with Satan stalking around the movie, and that made it neat, too.

All in all, it was an OK movie. Not great, not bad. Anyone who claims to have been spiritually touched by it, though, is an idiot. As you know, I'm not typically so blunt (HA HA!) but come on. The movie was REALLY shallow for a theological point of view, and didn't show anything I hadn't seen a million times before on TV, the movies, or in the Bible itself. The Last Temptation of Christ was a MUCH more spiritually engaging film, and it didn't even depend on gore. Anybody who was actually converted by this movie needs to be slapped in the head.

Anyway, after Passion we went to see the awesome remake of Dawn of the Dead for a second time. It was a zombie double-feature!