  Man in restaurant : We'd like a bottle of house wine, please. Waiter : Certainly sir. Red or white? Man in restaurant : What are they like? Waiter : The white's a '97 Cabernet, quite fruity. Man in restaurant : And the red? Waiter : The red represents the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for all our sins.
Everyone and his dog knows at least 2 things about this film: it's really, really bloody there ain't a single line in English The second one bugged me especially, since the wonderful Korean cinema industry decided to only show Korean subtitles (usually, in the case of LOTR / Last Samurai / most other movies involving a foreign language, they show both). In the end, it wasn't such a bad thing, as everyone knows how this story goes. The film covers a very short period in Christ's life; namely the end of it.
Starting from Judas' betrayal, Jim Caviezel (Jesus) receives his first twatting bout 20 minutes in, and doesn't stop getting the crap beaten out of him for the next 100 minutes. The violence is the main thing that will stay with you after watching this film, most of it extremely graphic and disturbingly realistic.
Caviezel (you may remember him from such films as Pay it Forward and The Thin Red Line) is Jesus, and is damn near unrecognisable from his other performances. Expect him to become a huge, huge star in the wake of this film's inevitable success at the box office. The other noteworthy performance comes from Bulgarian actor Hristo Shopov, who is awesome as Pontius Pilate. So yeah... there's a lot of blood. The flogging scene, where Jesus gets the crap whipped, and then flayed, out of him is especially harrowing, leaving Jesus with not one square inch of skin which isn't either badly cut or soaked in blood.
Mel Gibson's skill as a director is clear for all to see in scenes like this, but all of his films to date have had one major flaw; namely the pacing. Remember how long Braveheart was? Now, how much do you actually remember from that film? Probably the first and last 15 minutes, and the kickarse battle that takes place somewhere in the middle.
The rest of the film dragged, and Christ follows the same pattern. After the flogging sequence (which rendered an entire Korean theatre completely silent, not an easy task), it takes 35 minutes for Jesus to drag his cross up the hill. 35 minutes of him looking agonised while Romans spit on him. 35 minutes! Gibson does break it up with flashbacks of the last supper, and other key moments in Christ's life, but these are few and far between, each lasting about 30 seconds.
It's a dull, dull sequence, and they'd have done everyone a favour by cutting it by 20 minutes or so. In contrast, the cruxifiction, and subsequent denouement, is excellently done. You've got to watch this in a cinema, or at least on a TV with a decent sound system, because the sounds of those nails going in will stay with you for a long, long time.
My second gripe with the film comes right at the end, when He is Risen! It's a short sequence where we see the boulder shift out the way, and a healthy, engimatic Christ emerge from the darkness. Now, maybe I'm just jaded, maybe I've watched too much WWE, but right at the end I honestly expected him to look right into the camera, and say "King Herod, I will destroy you at Wrestlemania, for I am risen!
" (caption: Wrestlemania AD33: The Saviour Returns). Just a little cheesy, Mel. Other problems I have with the film - OK, so Satan's in it, but she (yes, it's a 'she) does very little other than look ugly and scowl. What was the point? Also, there was a cool part near the beginning, where Judas, haunted by his betrayal, starts seeing demons and shows signs of going insane, and then.... it stops, and we never see him again. Bugger. All in all, worth seeing. Just go for a piss while Jesus is on his way up the hill, you won't miss much. 
