Warning: Post contains blasphemy and racist commentary. Actually, this post possesses absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
I had debated seeing it on opening day, but my fear of the relgious fanatics setting the theatre on fire wasn't enough to keep my curiousity in check.
I live in North Hollywood. I'm no expert on demographics, but I'd wager that 40% of the people in NoHo are White, 30% are Hispanic, 20% are African American, and the remaining 10% would fall under the 'Other' category (actually, most of the remaining 10% would be Armenian, Lithuanian, Czech, Russian... ya know, dirty Eastern Europeans). I'd say there were about 400 people in the auditorium, 2 of which were caucasian, and 1 of which was African American. The rest were of Hispanic decent. If this movie accomplishes nothing else, Mel Gibson can sleep well knowing that yet another generation of ******** will name all of their children Jesus and Maria.
Anyway, my impressions...
It was bloody. By the time the crucifixion comes, Jesus' flesh is so tattered and torn you can actually see his ribs sticking out of his flesh. It's ironic in a way, up until now the bloodiest movie I'd ever seen was Hellraiser. It was almost as if Jesus had been swallowed by the whale, and not Jonah- but instead of being released without harm, Jesus had been squirted out the whale's razor-lined baby-hole.
Move over bacon, here comes something Jesusier!
It was actually a pretty emotional movie. I had to scratch my eye with a tissue once or twice. It was pretty well acted, with the exception of 'The Bad Guys'. They didn't strike me so much as actors portraying bad characters, but rather, absurd caricatures played by bad actors.
Jim Caviezel, in the lead role of Jesus, gave a pretty good performance. My only real criticism is that Jesus seemed a little too rigid, a little too stern. Obviously, I didn't expect him to break out in a song-and-dance number, fart once or twice, and then tell some Skeeteresque jokes, but I would have liked to have seen some more of the kindness and love for which he's reknowned. In all seriousness, I think it would have strengthened the message of the movie.
Do I think the Jews have reason to be upset? Were they portrayed as evil hate mongers with a mob mentality?
When I went to the movie, I was expecting that the Jewish community was being too sensitive. And then I saw the first hour of the movie, and I started to suspect that my expectations had been wrong. The Jews were portrayed in a pretty bad light. They all had the stereotypical large, hooked Jewish nose, spoke in that cliche'd annoyingly nasally voice, and came off as cruel, vindictive, hateful, and really really bad dressers.
But then I started to notice that the Jews weren't alone; they weren't the only pricks in the movie. Jesus' followers were all pretty much bastards too, but not quite to the extent in which the Hook-Nosed Semites were.
And then the Roman Soldiers came along. And, that pretty much forced me to change my mind about changing my mind. The Jews weren't portrayed any better or worse than anybody else in the movie. Really.
The only people in the movie who always behaved kindly and nobly were females: Mary, Mary Magdelene, Claudia, and whoever that ugly chick with the Shroud of Turin was.
Basically, if your name is not Mary or Jesus, you're pretty much an as[i][/i]shole. At least I think that's the message Mr. Gibson was trying to get across.
But the aspect of the movie which struck me as the most compelling, the most fascinating, and the most moving was...
Monica Belluci. Hot damn that woman knows how to jiggle. Chunks of flesh were getting strewn about the screen, people were dying and screaming all over the place, crows were pecking out eyeballs, there were a bunch of spooky Satan sequences, our Lord and Saviour was dying for our sins, and all I could think of was, "Damn, I'd like a piece of that ***!"