The Passion of the Christ

Reviewed by:
Deborah Day

Macho-man actor and filmmaker Mel Gibson (What Women Want) tackles a classic persecution tale (the classic tale, some would say) with blood, gore, pain, suffering, more blood, more gore, more suffering and still even more blood…sprinkled with a little agony and grief. From a clinical standpoint—and by that we mean, “Get thee to a clinic stat, Jesus!”—a person can’t help but wonder how, in this particular theatrical version of Jesus’ last 12 hours, the man didn’t just plum run out of blood. Son of God and all that, but he was still supposed to be a man, right? One flesh-ripped-from-the-ribcage moment and any other dude would certainly be immobilized rather than stumbling toward his own crucifixion. If you’re down with the king, “Jesus rocks” here, as one enthralled Ash Wednesday audience member shouted. If Jesus doesn’t rock you, blame lead actor Jim Caviezel, whose Aramaic* was appalling!

* The joke here is that Aramaic, the language of Jesus, is a “dead language”—very few people speak it. So Jim wouldn’t really know how to speak Aramaic like Jesus, would he? You can go now. Thanks for reading.