Here's a new new candidate for a timeless biblical epic.
I've seen this on the shelf for some time now yet the cover and short blurb on the back never quite had me wanting to see it. But this seems to be a slow time now for rentals with a lot of movies I've already watched or slashers. So this one came home with me.
With the likes of Max Von Sidow and F. Murray Abraham, and nod towards some sort of early Bible era story, this movie showed promise in spite of the fact that Dolph Lundgren is also in it. [Sorry, I'm so NOT a he-man more meat than brains movie affectionado]. Unfortunately the veteran actors had minor roles in this. Dolph was upfront with a full beard and without a high powed rapid fire death machine in each hand. How would he pull this off? OH – by swinging axes at people while grunting like a hog. Nice touch. Oops, strayed a bit off topic.
The story, loosely conveyed, is an aging Caeser Tiberius (Max) has heard about the Jewish Rabbi put to death in Jerusalem and sends an emmesary in secret to find out if it's true the man rose from the dead. Okay, I could possibly get into this, even if it is fiction laced with fact. But then there's the love story woven into it between the Roman emmesary and a daughter of a Jewish Pharasee, ummm, okay this is way more fiction than fact.
The acting is very weak. Even the veterans are weak, so maybe it was the directing to blame. There were scenes with dialog that ended very abruptly in a way that made you miss the next scene from scratching your head going "huh? what just happened here?", so yes, the directing was very weak. Well, the story was weak too. There was some nice scenery.
As for the biblical epic? Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer will get my vote before this does.
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