Review

Risen

Clavius (Joseph Fiennes) pulls the old Jedi mind trick on his aide, tenderfoot centurion Lucius (Tom Felton), in the biblical procedural Risen.
Clavius (Joseph Fiennes) pulls the old Jedi mind trick on his aide, tenderfoot centurion Lucius (Tom Felton), in the biblical procedural Risen.

There's a kind of weird buzz surrounding Risen, described in some quarters as "the movie Hollywood doesn't want you to see."

It's hard to say why they wouldn't want you to see it, or at least pay to see it. It's being released by Affirm Films, which is Columbia Pictures' in-house label for faith-based movies, the production company that made Soul Surfer (2011), Courageous (2011) and War Room (2015). They not only had an advance screening for the movie, but they invited film critics to see it. Which they didn't have to do.

Risen

85 Cast: Joseph Fiennes, Cliff Curtis, Tom Felton, Peter Firth, Maria Botto

Director: Kevin Reynolds

Rating: PG-13, for Biblical violence, including some disturbing images

Running time: 107 minutes

A lot of movies, particularly movies released in the first quarter of the year, aren't screened for critics. A lot of distributors of so-called faith-based films seek to circumvent critics entirely -- instead they might invite a columnist they perceive as ideologically simpatico to screen and hopefully write about their movies. To their credit, the filmmakers behind Risen haven't tried to prevent us from reviewing the film the way we would do every other release. They aren't asking for special dispensations.

And so they get none. Risen is an interesting idea, but as a work of art it's only modestly intriguing. It's serviceable, and in some ways better -- and more nuanced -- than we've come to expect so-called faith-based films to be. But it's still a specialty product that's likely to appeal only to believers, and only because its message is in line with their beliefs.

photo

Professional soldier Clavius (Joseph Fiennes) is required to investigate an apparent tomb robbery in Kevin Reynolds’ Risen.

Risen is a passable entertainment product, with reasonable production values and a competent cast, filmed on location in Spain and Malta. But if we're supposed to judge movies on how well they succeed on the terms they've set out for themselves, and if we imagine that the filmmakers intended Risen as the sort of movie that might break out of the faith-based genre or serve a proselytizing function, well, that's probably not going to happen.

But they should keep trying. What's most encouraging about Risen is its apparent latitudinarianism, its refusal to retreat into awe and wonder. For much of its playing time, it maintains a certain skepticism about its central mystery. For quite a while, it plays like a police procedural set in Judea in A.D. 33.

Clavius (Joseph Fiennes) is an ambitious Roman tribune who acts as a sort of sheriff for the occupied country. While his methods can be brutal, he is basically a pragmatist who longs for the time when he can peacefully retire, when he will know "a day without death." We meet him as he leads a raid on a band of Jewish resisters and summarily executes their leader.

Immediately after this battle, he's summoned by Pontius Pilate (Peter Firth, a TV star in the U.K. who's probably best known here for his role as a Russian officer in The Hunt for Red October) to oversee the crucifixion of a troublesome charismat who has been stirring up trouble, allegedly claiming to be the Jewish messiah. Clavius rides out to the crucifixion site, orders the soldiers to expedite the condemned's extinction, and, when a man appears with the proper documents to claim the body of the man called Yeshua (Cliff Curtis), better known these days as Jesus, he signs off on the release.

But Pilate and the Jewish high priests are concerned about a prophecy Yeshua made about his resurrection -- they fear his followers might break into the tomb, steal the body and claim that the messiah has arisen. So Clavius assigns a couple of comic relief soldiers to guard the tomb, which has been sealed by a huge stone lashed with ropes.

It's probably not a spoiler to reveal that Yeshua's body disappears anyway. Clavius is charged with investigating, with the help of an aide, Lucius (Tom Felton, Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films) who, we're told, comes from a prominent Roman family. The most interesting part of the film involves Clavius and Lucius threatening and cajoling witnesses as they search for the missing corpse -- or at least a corpse that can represent the absconded Yeshua.

It might be literally blasphemous to say that the final act of the movie is anti-climatic, but here it encounters a problem inherent to all films that feature miracles as dramatic devices. An event of miraculous scale ought to wipe out any skepticism -- I imagine you're changed forever once you've seen the dead walk. Clavius is a more interesting character when he's a cynical investigator trying to suss out what sort of scam Yeshua's disciples are running -- but after he has seen the evidence with his own eyes, you'd think he'd be convinced. It might have been a better strategy to end the film shortly after Clavius finds Jesus.

Still, Fiennes is quite good here, at least for the two-thirds of the film in which he's sulking around the boondocks looking for the conniving band of body snatchers. At times he seems to be channeling Jon Hamm's Don Draper from Mad Men, a mode that feels right, given how Firth portrays Pilate as a world-weary bureaucrat. And the movie isn't without a sense of humor -- the high priest Caiaphas (Stephen Greif), in particular, has a wicked sense of timing.

All in all, Risen isn't the worst movie former Kevin Costner collaborator Kevin Reynolds (Fandango, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Waterworld) has ever made. And I guarantee that Hollywood would love for you to see it.

MovieStyle on 02/19/2016

Upcoming Events