Because of all that, Jesus only has to put up with evil people in this movie the film does a fine job of underscoring the evil of human beings at certain times, but without the Devil tempting and testing Christ (and subverting humanity), some important lessons and themes are cut out (including the biggest one of them all: good triumphing over evil). I only learned later that these scenes were actually cut, because of concerns that Satan looked too much like President Obama. The biggest omission, however, is the absence of the most important villain: Satan. The film throws in more scenes with Pilate's wife, for no apparent reason. However, the film can be nit-picked for getting certain facts wrong: the manner in which Jesus resurrects Lazarus differs from what's in the Bible, Jesus causing a ruckus in the temple occurs way sooner than it should have, Peter denouncing Jesus thrice happens later than it should have, and so on. It's not word-for-word faithful to the Bible, which is understandable, since the film would have probably droned on for hours if it was. The biggest issue with the film, however, are the artistic liberties taken with the source material. Characters act the part, but nothing much is revealed about their deepest motivations or feelings, so they come off as one-dimensional caricatures. It's like they just wander around and do stuff, and when they get to where they're going, it's like, "hey, it's time for such-and-such a scene." So you see many of the major events one-after-another, but on a thin thread of a plot. The film generally strings all the major events from the New Testament into some kind of narrative, although it's never clear where Jesus and his apostles are going from one minute to the next, and why. As far as the content goes, it's going to be a hit-and-a-miss. The film plays out in a straight and earnest fashion. There are bursts of melodrama, violence, political intrigue, and an overall sense of wonder at times. It runs pretty briskly, breezing through one scene after another to cover all of Jesus' life in a short couple of hours. Some folks have written this off as a bore, but I found myself pretty well-engaged in the film. All that being said, I expected this film to be worse, given some of the reviews I've read. Secondly, I must admit that I'm probably not well-versed enough in the good book or theology in general to judge every single nuance of this film. It's one of those TV shows I was meaning to check out, but haven't found the time to, and then mixed reviews held me back. First of all, I didn't initially realize that this film was a spin off of The Bible miniseries from the History channel.
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