Film Review – Son of God

Director: Christoper Spencer
Screenplay: Colin Swash, Nic Young and Richard Bedser
Cast: Diogo Morgado, Roma Downey, Amber Rose Revah, Darwin Shaw and Sebastian Knapp
Genre: Biblical Drama
Ratings:**

Son of God is based on the story of the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. It tells his whole story from the day he was born until the day he died and resurrected shortly afterwards. It is a full cinematographic biography of the life of Jesus.
Unless you have been living under a rock, 99% of humanity knows the story of Jesus Christ even though many do not believe it. Therefore I will not elaborate much on the plot but concentrate on the acting, picture, screenplay and special effects.
 The story of Christ in Son of God is told by John the last disciple of Christ to die, who was exiled to Patmos, according to early church tradition, also the place where he received the Revelation.
Putting the Christ story in the mouth of John is  very clever of the director and writers because now the film has a voice over, which is one of the things I liked about it.
The beginning of the film is very boring and stretches on and on for a long time. This part of the film reminds me of the short films we where forced to watch in Sunday school about Christ, but back then everyone ended up falling asleep. Yes, even though you might be a strong believer in Christ, in the first 45 minutes of this film you will have snoozed a couple of times. The film gets a bit more interesting towards the middle when Christ goes to Jerusalem, right where the prophets, council and elders want him.

Here the acting gets intense and Diogo Morgado who plays Christ starts to show more emotion, which also helped to wake me up from my slumber. I started to pay more attention and concentrate on the film. In the first part of the film his acting is mediocre and just basic. I think even I can act better.
Another aspect I liked about Son of God is that it is not as intense and gruesome as Mel Gibson’s 2004, Passion of the Christ, which is just too gross for me. Son of God is more subtle in its intensiveness, it makes you think more deeper and say “Oh this dude did suffer a lot and not just physically”. Son of God takes you behind the scene of how the people around Christ plotted his downfall, betrayed him and denied him. From the head priest of the council, to Judas, to Peter denying him and Pilat washing his hands and letting the people decide what to do with Christ, the human conniving is intense. The writers of Son of God also feature Barabbas quite a bit and give us a glimpse of his story and how he fought so hard, he just wanted the Jews to be free from the Romans. Incidentally, Barabbas means Son of the Fathers and much has been speculated why the gospel writers chose this particular name to portray the accused Christ antecedent. It is also superficially inferred in Son of God.
By the way, Son of God is very long. It took me two days to finish watching it because it bored me at first and I rather wanted to watch some silly Housewife episode, “more drama”. So make sure you set free at least 2 hours and 30minutes of your time and hang on because it will be a long boring road, and a bit of excitement at the end.