| RATING: | 40% |
| FORMAT: | DVD |
Redemption tale that is fun but not very thoughtful. Melodramatic and emotional hystericism rule the day and show how thin a veneer of pacifism really exists within the Christian communion.
The bizarre theme of renouncing violence is simply a pretext for more of the same violence, since pacifists automatically put their lives in danger by openly declaring their ethical cowardice; ie, turning the other cheek to a violent person, merely invites the violence against which the cheek is turned. Using Christianity as a justification for the relentless and rather repetitive violence on show here is - as it happens - quite natural, since the religion is the most violent in history, yet it contradicts the wish for peace of the central characters.
We are constantly told that the world is a terrible place - full of evil - in which case violent self-defense becomes a prerequisite to survival. Yet the masochism on show here from White Christians is based on the belief in the absence of freewill and that evil is God’s will. This movie thus becomes an apostates’ heresy based on the essential and contradictory belief that god is both loving and hating. These issues are not properly worked out in favor of puritan fundamentalist mysticism. Clearly, the afterlife and the myth of a Savior is no more than death-worshiping wishful-thinking.
A simplistic battle of good and evil is played out without any attempt at character development, so we care little for those who die and suffer; the film being content only to get us from one violent set-piece to another. This kind of meretricious rubbish wastes very good actors: If this be Christianity, no wonder it failed.
Trying hard to be a cross between the legend of King Arthur and The Name of the Rose, this rarely rises above the visual clichés and unimaginative plotting. And like
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