Reviews

So refreshing to see a movie depicting a hero who isn't a cartoon-like Super Hero. The industry is sadly saturated with action-action-action Hollywood films. Sully suffers mildly from post-traumatic stress after he successfully lands his damaged plane in the Hudson River, amazingly saving all 155 of its passengers. After the landing, he is made a hero in the public's eyes, but begins to doubt himself when the aviation panel believes he could have successfully landed the plane in the LaGuardia runway. This story that unfolds is realistic, intelligent, and moving. Do we really need car chase scenes or explosions to hold our interest? My favorite line of the movie was when the hotel maid hugged Sully, and he asked, "What just happened?" The crash was not overplayed, thus, more tragic. The rescue scene was brutally realistic. The aviation panel's witch hunt was ugly and unfounded, and the fact that this story was based on true event made it even more harrowing. What was needed was for people to stand up and salute at the end of the final hearing. Amazing movie.

I think you have to be male to like this movie. How's THAT for being sexist! I watched most of the movie with popcorn grease-stained napkin bits shoved in my ears. Anyway, this was the kind of movie where you see Mr. Testosterone blast and kill with his M-47 machine gun as if he were in this high intensity video game, where "the bad guys" (in this case, Arabs) come at him a billion at a time, for ten full minutes. BORING! Also, you see a man whose hands are tied behind his back get full-powered punched in the face about six times, then, a half hour later, he's just dandy, with perfect white shiny teeth. People survive when their car flips and rolls, when they run through fire, and when twenty "bad guys" are firing at them. Simply amazing! Our American hero tortures "a bad guy" with a knife, twisting it grotesquely between his two ribs, and later the President asks him, "Was that necessary?", to which he replies, "No." I didn't know whether to laugh or to duck in shame.

Risen gave a fresh but solemn view of the biblical story of the aftermath of Jesus's crucifixion as it tells the story through the eyes of a conflicted and emotionally drained Roman soldier named Clavius. Clavius seems more of a tired observer with his deep stare and mellow manner, and he seems appalled by the violence that the Roman soldiers perform, violence that he himself is called on to perform as well. He is tired of it all and wants to retire to a quiet life with a family, without witnessing any more deaths. None-the-less, duty demands that he kill from time to time, which he dutifully does, and he seems half mortified over this, and half compliant. During the battle in the beginning of the movie, Clavius apathetically kills a Jewish rebel, and later, during the tri-crucifixion scene, he orders a Roman soldier to break a prisoner's leg as he's dying on the cross, then runs his spear through Jesus's ribs, and he's no more bothered by this than if someone fender-bendered him at the supermarket.

The way Fiennes played his role as a troubled Roman official was intriguing, capturing civilians to question them about the whereabouts of Jesus's body, then dismissing them at will. The viewer expected Clavius to perhaps resort to violence or torture to get his captures to speak and reveal where Jesus's body is, knowledge that he desperately needed to satisfy his commander, Pontius Pilate. However, Clavius never quite went that far, either out of compassion or exhaustion. While Fiennes was cast well, Curtis, who plays Jesus, is a cross between a California hippie and a happy skateboard dude in a Coke commercial. In his final good-bye scene, Jesus glibly calls across the sand yelling his farewell as if mom was telling her kids to be good while dad's in charge.

Clavius's young side kick Lucius is played by Tom Felton, and unlike Draco, Lucius follows Clavius around looking confused. Bartholomew was my favorite character. Clavius demands that Bartholomew tell him where Jesus's body is, and Bartholomew grins flippantly and conveys that he ain't telling nothing'! Clavius interrogates him more harshly, kicks him to the ground, and Bartholomew gets up and slowly approaches Clavius, solemnly bends down to his ear, and says, "he's everywhere!" Then Bartholomew beams and prances away; the joke's on Clavius! The only more comical scene was when Clavius asked a group of men, "Does any of you know Mary Magdalene?" and all of them raised their hands. One more -- I was amused when Mary Magdalene looked like Miss Karate Woman beats Godzilla when she kicked an advancing soldier out of her way and escaped through a stone window. Mary is cast well, but her role is too brief, as is all the twelve disciples who are never given any individual definition (except for Simon, who sometimes pouts, and who sometimes is as happy as Santa Claus). Pontius Pilate is old and whiny and is fixated on not upsetting public opinion. Maybe he was really like that, but they don't show the inner turmoil he must have felt being forced to kill an innocent man to placate the masses.

We all know the ending, but Risen takes an unorthodox (if you will) direction. We see facial expressions of shock and realization that tell the story better than computer-generated special effects, and we are constantly grounded into this time period with the frequent buzzing of flies over rotting bodies, hair filled with dust and sand, broken statues of the gods, and earthquakes that crack massive stone gates. Thus, Risen shows instead of tells, and doesn't preach, thank God.

Weird. This movie was definitely weird, and that in itself is not necessarily bad. Weird can be okay. I found this movie to be weird, unique, disturbing, interesting, and creepy. Not scary, more creepy. The good parts about this movie was the scenery, the acting, the uniqueness (no clichés in *this* film), and the time period (mid 1600's). The absolute worst part of this film was that I couldn't understand most of it. I didn't understand most (and that means over 50%) of the sentences. I wanted subtitles. I'm reading from others that the dialogue was a wee bit hard to understand. Ya' THINK? That's kind of like saying a cannon fired on a ship gives a few splinters. Anyway, I understood about 20% of the dialogue. The second worst thing was that it didn't tie things together. SPOILER ALERT (kind of): I waited for the end to tell me who the witch really was, what did she do, was the teenage girl insane (that would have been a better ending in my opinion), why did the mother hallucinate, was anyone really evil, what happened to Caleb in the cave, what happened to the twins, etc. etc. The third worst element was the over dramatized scenes for effect -- he gets gutted, she gets strangled, he upchucks a bloody apple, she gets the knife, he gets shot in the eye (but later, no blood!), she gets hen-pecked, the boy has a 1950 haircut... my WORD! And the ending was just silly to me. A talking goat? At that point, I wondered if the film was realistic and someone lost their mind. Nope. Sheer silly fantasy. This may be my failing in that I was expecting realism from a fantastical film. But the dark mood, the cinematography, and the imagery haunted me. The acting was superb. Also, the paranoia, suspicion, and mistrust that existed in a family who loved each other was done well.