"Risen" - A Review

As you have probably noticed, over the past few years a huge number of Christian films have graced the silver screen. And as you are probably also aware of, the latest Christian film to land in cinemas is a biblical epic called Risen. Risen is about a Roman tribune named Clavius (Joseph Fiennes, Luther) who is tasked by Pontius Pilate (Peter Firth, The Hunt for Red October) with making sure that Jesus' disciples do not steal His body after His crucifixion and claim that He rose from the dead. But when Jesus' body disappears, Clavius is tasked with finding the body in order to prevent a crisis.

I just came home from watching this movie, and I have to say that I was disappointed with this movie. Don't get me wrong, the first half of the film is some of the best Christian filmmaking I have ever seen. I only have two complaints about the first half of the film. The first complaint is that in the opening battle scene, the Roman army seems a little too disorganized to believably pass as one of the most imposing military forces of the day. The second is that Clavius's new aide (played by Tom Felton from the Harry Potter films) is introduced in a very forced manner and contributes nothing to the story other than to serve as someone for Clavius to talk to. But other than that, the first half is excellent. The acting is solid, the pacing flows wonderfully, and (with the exception of one or two minor missteps) the writing and directing are excellent. It was like watching a mystery show that takes place in the Roman Empire.

But all of this is overshadowed by the second half when the screenwriters try (and fail miserably) to turn Risen into an installment of The Visual Bible series. Literally the entire second half is scene after scene of adaptations of the scenes from the Gospels in which Jesus appears to His disciples. Aside from the fact that this is (unfortunately) boring to watch due to slow pacing, the problem with this is that the adaptations are not totally accurate. For example, when the film depicts the scene where the disciples go fishing and they don't catch anything until Jesus shows them where to cast the nets, the motivations for going fishing is changed. In the Bible, Peter decides to go fishing and the other disciples decide to go with him. However, in Risen, Mary Magdalene tells the disciples that they must go to Galilee to meet with Jesus, and on the way they need to obtain food and decide to go fishing since they so conveniently happen to be passing by the sea of Galilee.

This may seem like nitpicking, but there are other, bigger problems with the second half of the movie. One such problem is the depiction of the disciples. More specifically, how Peter and Bartholomew were depicted. In this film, Peter (played by Stewart Scudamore) is basically a grumpy old man who it seems learned nothing from Jesus' statement that we are to forgive others not seven times but seventy times seven. Meanwhile, Bartholomew (played by Stephen Hagan) comes off as a fellow who is not totally in his right mind (this is actually an issue in the first half of the movie as well). Maybe that is what the two of them were actually like, but we do not have enough information in the Bible to make the creative decision to depict them this way (in case you can't tell, I'm a stickler for biblical figures being accurately depicted in biblical films). But here is the thing that really upset me: at one point in the film Clavius asks Bartholomew why he followed Jesus. Bartholomew's answer: because of the miracles. Wrong. The reason the disciples followed Jesus had nothing to do with the miracles He performed. The disciples followed Jesus simply because Jesus called them. I could rant about this longer, but I would basically just end up saying everything that Steven Curtis Chapman's song "For the Sake of the Call" said more eloquently. Go listen to that, and then come back and read the rest of this post. I'll wait.

OK, now that you've listened to the song, we can move on to the next big problem with Risen: the fact that Jesus (played by Cliff Curtis) is actually depicted in the film. This is the main source of my disappointment because I was hoping that given the premise of the film that we would never actually see Jesus. The reason I was hoping this is because any depiction of Jesus is a violation of the second commandment. Before you get mad at me for saying that, please hear me out. The reason depictions of Jesus are a violation of the second commandment is because of the way said depictions affect the mind of the spectator. The danger of depictions of Jesus is that once the spectator gets that image of Jesus into his mind, it is very easy when worshiping Jesus for said spectator to subconsciously worship the image of Jesus that was put into his head by the depiction of Jesus that he saw. When this happens, the depiction of Jesus becomes a graven image that the spectator, on a subconscious level, is worshiping.

So is Risen worth your time and money? Well, like I said, the first half is excellent. I actually wish that the screenwriters had developed the storyline of the first half more so that the movie could have ended with the scene that marks the half way point, thereby skipping the bad attempt at making an installment of The Visual Bible. I think that doing so would not only have made for a much more interesting movie, but also would have allowed them to avoid the theological errors that are present in the film. But alas, that is not what the screenwriters did, and so I am unfortunately going to have to recommend that you skip this film.