'Passion' is intensely violent, detailed

Ambitious, bold, bloody and violent, Mel Gibson's $30 million religious production detailing the last 12 hours in the life of Jesus Christ mixes invention with pretension, art with artifice.

At several crucial moments in Christ's agonizing trek through his own Crucifixion, the camera adopts the persecuted man's point of view, what he sees as he stumbles to the ground, covering his body with a paste of sweat, blood and dirt. As Christ falls, the camera falls with him, turning us upside-down in a blur of sights and sounds, suggesting the turmoil and torment of his walk to his death.

For a few moments, we become the Christ. We feel what he feels. We experience what he suffers.

No film dramatization of the Crucifixion has been this explicitly violent, horrifically detailed, and this personal and up-close. Gibson, a devout Catholic who credits Jesus for turning around his spiraling life several years ago, directs "The Passion of the Christ" as he did his Oscar-winning war epic, "Braveheart" - with unabashed fascination for showing the realistic cost of physical violence committed against a human being.

Jesus, being scourged by Roman soldiers, kneels in a courtyard while chunks of his flesh are ripped away by the hooks and whips applied to his body. Accompanied by meticulously selected, cringe-inducing sound effects, these scenes might be called "violence-porn" in a mad slasher movie. Here, the violence is the point. Gibson wants us to feel the Christian savior's pain, to know the true extent of the sacrifice made by the Son of Man to cleanse humankind of sin.

"The Passion" (which, in the original form, meant "the suffering") begins in the garden of Gethsemane where Jesus (Jim Caviezel), upset, appears to be suffering a break down - perhaps of his faith?

He has an unsettling encounter with Satan (Rosalinda Celentano), a strange, oddly androgynous human with no eyebrows. The Tempter, resembling a character in the Exorcist, appears in significant moments in "The Passion," all the way up to and including the resurrection.

Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene (Jewish actress Maia Morgenstern and Monica Bellucci) spend most of their screen time sobbing and following Jesus as he is whipped, spit upon and jeered by crowds as he lugs a heavy cross through the streets.

At one point, a Roman officer orders a Jewish officer to help the condemned man. The Roman makes a point of calling the man "Jew," to be sure we realize not all Jews hated Jesus.

Is "The Passion" anti-Semitic? Not at all.

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To be sure, the movie has a few evil Jews, especially Caiphas (Mattia Sbragia), the leader who calls for Christ's execution despite the rational appeals by a reluctant Roman governor, Pontius Pilate (Hristo Naumov Shopov), to spare the man's life.

By now, few people haven't heard how Gibson whittled away some of the more offensive dialogue that Jewish leaders said would inflame anti-Semitic sentiments amongst moviegoers.

Gibson tells this drama (which he co-wrote from the Four Gospels in the New Testament) with intelligence and without dumbing anything down for mass audiences. In fact, he challenges us. "The Passion" has been filmed in Latin and Aramaic, the languages of Jesus' time. Although English subtitles have been handled much like a regular foreign language film, Gibson uses them sparingly, declining to translate things that are obvious.

"The Passion" is a scrappy, tough piece of storytelling. It's slightly marred by Gibson's over-reliance on slow-motion shots, with some that feel strained and superfluous.

As a movie product, "The Passion" has broken lots of Hollywood rules. Its clever marketing strategy has bypassed conventional press coverage and taken a grass-roots campaign to the Christian community. The movie has already redefined how Hollywood and Americans think about religious movies.

In fact, "The Passion" has pulled off one ironic miracle already. Conservative religious organizations that, for decades, have tried to protect families and society from R-rated movies have now become the leading proponents of one.

Film: 'Passion' breaks Hollywood rules