Review of Bilal: A New Breed of Hero

Wow, I was completely unaware of the "popularity" this movie had. I love coming here and reading reviews where every other review is either a 1 or a 10! 1, 10, 1, 10, 2, 9. I watched this movie having only the knowledge of its title and IMDB rating, which is still very high (7.9) by the time I'm writing this, so I will try and give this an unbiased point of view. I also had no idea that Bilal was a religious figure, and that was a good thing as I generally hate religious movies so I went in with an open mind. I really liked the direction of the movie, really well shot scenes and very dynamic action scenes. One particularly long battle is probably the highlight of the movie as it rivals with any mainstream blockbuster. The problem was that the animation could have been better, it was not a disaster, mind you, but not up to the standards set by other studios or by the ambition of the direction. The story, on the other hand, was a bit of a mess. Again, I didn't know anything about Bilal, but many times it had the vibe of a religious propaganda movie, only it never went there which was very strange. After doing some research I found out he was a very important Islamic figure and it baffles me that they did a religious movie without any religion in it?! There are some western examples of movies that try the same thing, but in a different way, like the recent Ridley Scott directed Exodus, where it tries to show the Exodus story but with a scientific approach of how it could have happened without any supernatural occurrences. This is not it, it just veers away from religion every time something religious is about to happen. Very strange decision as it affects the flow of the movie and especially the ending is almost incomprehensible if you don't have the religious background. This leaves us with a Ben-Huresque kind of story, with a nice direction, nice rhythm, so so animation and a very confused audience. Not terrible. Not amazing.