Son of God Movie Download

7 / 10

A perfectly adequate by the book (no pun intended) story of Jesus
Let’s get this out of the way first. I was raised Christian right through until my adult life and since then…well I don’t consider myself a “Christian.” I am however well versed in the bible and am a long standing student of history, so this is where my review comes from. I HATE when a film like this comes out only to read the endless drivel from people who think this offends their very atheistic nature so they have to trash it based on only that. I am a film lover so I approach this as I do every film from a film perspective. Son of God is not the biblical epics of yesteryear. It is a toned down, much lower budgeted TV film that they ported onto the big screen with both added footage and removed footage. I have not yet seen the mini-series this came from but I look forward to checking it out. Was it necessary to port it to the big screen? No. Some of the set design and especially the long shots of the various ancient cities (Jerusalem etc) look awful…they’re video game quality at best. However, the film does lay out the Jesus story in a step by step fashion and doesn’t try to go outside of the box. That is both a good thing but also a hindrance. There isn’t anything here that someone who knows the story won’t recognize, Son of God plays it very safe.

Diogo Morgado (and for all of those wonderful nagging atheists that troll IMDb he’s not white…he’s Portuguese) is our title character, Jesus. He does a decent job. Its not brilliant but it certainly serves a purpose. He looks the role and his intensity is certainly well done in the end scenes of his eventual crucifixion. He is portrayed as charismatic and HAPPY which I enjoyed because many portrayals of Jesus have him looking stoic and brooding. Morgado is a decent safe choice for this role. Greg Hicks is quite good in a small role as Pontius Pilate. I actually really enjoyed the direction and the details they put into his character and his relationship with his wife. That was an added bit of depth I wasn’t expecting. The supporting cast is large but there were some particularly good performances from Darwin Shaw as Peter, Joe Wredden as Judas, Fraser Ayres (in a very small but effective role as Barabbas), and Said Bey as Matthew. I thought the performance from Amber Rose Revah was mostly unnecessary as Mary Magdalene, she was there a lot but really had no direction or purpose and it felt like she was in the way more than anything. I also wasn’t a huge fan of Roma Downey played the older Mary. Seeing her on screen was distracting when we had only just seen a much younger, prettier actress playing Mary at the beginning of the film. Downey seemed to overact even with her facial expressions and she was trying too hard to be angelic. The role wasn’t right for her.

The film is a little long, I know that Jesus’ story is epic in nature and there have been plenty of long films about his life that were deservedly lengthy but as long as Son of God is it felt like they rushed a lot of the stories to try to cover everything. Still, I enjoyed their iteration of his various miracles and the inevitable crucifixion scene at the end was brutal, hard to watch, and very well directed. Documentary film maker Christopher Spencer is no slouch as a director. He’s had plenty of experience but I think he could have benefited from some help from someone who knows storytelling is more than just laying out the facts. Still the story does a lot to make us understand the person that Jesus was and as a student of history I was impressed with how many accurate details were shown about the Roman empire and the time period this takes place in. I’m not defending the film per se but I think people are being too hard on it. It was made with the church community in mind and they will adore it. It tells the story very well and does not ruffle any feathers. Angry atheists will hate it because…well…anything with “Christian” on it deserves flogging and ridiculing don’t you know? The average film goer (me) will likely find it decently entertaining without being mind blowing. It tells a good story at its own pace with a few potholes but nothing that ruins the experience. Its the definition of average. 7/10Read More