Son of God (2014), PG-13, 1.5 stars

Jesus (Diogo Morgado) is hailing cheers from the crowd.

There have been many film adaptations centering around the chronicles of Jesus' life from his birth to his death. I cannot really debate which film depicts Jesus' life or section of his life the best. My two personal best films about Jesus are: The Passion of the Christ directed by Mel Gibson which depicted the last hours of his life in a graphic state and Jesus of Nazareth, a long TV-movie which depicts his whole life by the great director Franco Zeffirelli. Since Easter is around the corner, those are the two movies I'd recommend to watch and experience (the former for mature adults only). This movie is distractingly bland.

The movie starts with John, the last disciple living in exile, telling the story of Jesus Christ. The movie opens with a brief nativity scene and leaps forward quickly to an adult Jesus (Diogo Morgado) gathering his fellow disciples from John to Peter to Matthew. Jesus gathers more followers and name him as the Messiah as he tells them his fable and give them teachings. The Pharisees question his religious teachings and claim Jesus is blaspheming God. Jesus proclaims himself as the Son of God. You have the title, right there.

Basically, everybody knows the rest of the story. Jesus tells his disciples that he will travel to Jerusalem for the Passover holiday. People praise him and held their palms leaves in the air as he enters traveling on a donkey. The Pharisees are scared and tells Pontius Pilate that His presence in the city will agitate the people. Jesus destroys the tables of money changers as he enters the Temple and tells a little girl that every stone of the Temple will fall. The Pharisees evaluate His comments as a threat to destroy the Temple.

Obviously, Judas approaches the Pharisses and is bribed with 30 pieces of silver for his assistance to capture Jesus. Jesus gives the Last Supper and proclaims that one of His disciples will betray him. (Who do you think, readers?) Jesus and a few of His disciples go into the Garden of Gethsemane where the Pharisees arrest him for blasphemy and Judas revealing he is the person who betrayed Jesus by kissing on His cheek. From there on, we all know where this is going.

Jesus struggling to carry the cross up to the hill.

There's nothing wrong with the material. It is straight forward, but the challenge is to direct it at a good and vivid angle. The material was not compelling or earnest enough to show his life as a movie. Also, the movie felt like it was so rushed that the filmmakers wanted to get the production over with because this production is sub-par. Even if they slowed down, it would not make much of a difference producing a good-enough movie. Diogo Morato is appealing but does not make a convincing Jesus compared to Jim Caviezel, Robert Powell or even Willem Dafoe from The Last Temptation of Christ directed by Martin Scorsese, which was not great, but it was still a very good movie.

This version would suffice as a movie to watch on Sunday school, but I would switch this movie at the very last minute, and put on Jesus of Nazareth to watch for the duration of 3-4 weekends for an hour or so since it is a mini-series. At times, the look of the film is good, but the production design interferes. I tried to be faithful to endure the movie as a safe and harmless movie depicting Jesus' life, but the movie's lack of poise and control takes over the earnestness that it deserves. This movie looked more like a small Biblical tv movie than a theatrical movie.

*1/2