Toward the end of this biblical epic about the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the ascension, I was sorry that the openings credits didn’t conclude with “and Cliff Curtis as Jesus.” The New Zealand actor who portrays “the King of the Jews” isn’t onscreen much, but when he is, he’s seen as a superstar, whether healing a leper or providing net-loads of food for hungry fishermen, or just beaming his beatific smile. All of that positiveness is in the latter part of the film, as the grim beginning is concerned with his brutal murder.
But in between that beginning and ending, director Kevin Reynolds (“The Count of Monte Cristo,” “Waterworld”) gives us a mystery-thriller. It’s the story of the fictional Roman military tribune Clavius (Joseph Fiennes), the right-hand man to the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate (Peter Firth), who ordered the crucifixion of Jesus. As the story goes, Jesus, called here by his Hebrew name Yeshua, was killed on the cross, then sealed inside a cave, with guards out front to ensure that he wouldn’t rise again in three days, as predicted by his followers.
But in the midst of Clavius winning battles for Rome by slaughtering anyone near him on any battlefields, and constantly being summoned back to Pilate to do his bidding when any rough stuff was required, that cave, despite the seal and the two guards out front, is found empty.
This signals a case of bad timing for the villainous, wine-swilling Pilate, who is expecting a visit from the emperor, and doesn’t want the idea of a potential messiah floating around, especially since Yeshua’s followers have let Roman officials know that “When the Messiah comes, Rome will be nothing.”
And so, when Clavius once again hears the words, “Pilate summons you,” he’s told to “find the body!” Clavius, though often ordered to carry out nasty deeds, is portrayed as a good man, but a worshipper of the god Mars, and a non-believer of anyone else. He wants power and wealth and a family, so for now he works hard and serves well.
The cool twist the film takes is that it turns from the swords-and-sandals genre, featuring Roman soldiers as tight fighting units, into the kind of procedural that regularly appears on network television, a sort of “CSI: Judea,” complete with doors being kicked down. Clavius becomes a soldier-turned-detective, on a mission to find out what happened to the body. Was it stolen by his followers? Did Yeshua rise on his own?
It really is an odd matchup of moods and plotlines. At the start, everything is grim, and the movie is filled with death and decay and buzzing flies, all of which Clavius is numb to. The script saddles him with a sense of frustration as he goes about following leads, and tracking down and questioning subjects. One of the film’s major strengths is the fine interior performance from Fiennes, who keeps his Clavius calm and relatively quiet through all of this, and eventually shows off a complex arc the character ends up following; and he does this without the help of a lot of dialogue.
The mood really changes in the latter parts of the film, when Yeshua is found among his disciples, an occurrence that rocks the world of Clavius, especially since he was present at the crucifixion. That changing character arc is signaled by the reactions on the face of Clavius to the strange events around him. Once he finally has a brief, quiet chat with Yeshua, he doesn’t know what the heck is going on.
The film manages to be both devout and entertaining as it asks if a non-believer can become a believer. Though his screen time is briefer than that of Fiennes, Curtis (currently starring as Travis on “Fear the Walking Dead,” but maybe best known as Agent Bowman in “Live Free or Die Hard”) is absolutely transfixing as Yeshua. While spreading his word of love, you almost expect him to break into song. But he doesn’t; that’s another movie.
Ed Symkus writes about movies for More Content Now.
RISEN
Written by Paul Aiello and Kevin Reynolds; directed by Kevin Reynolds
With Joseph Fiennes, Cliff Curtis, Peter Firth
Rated PG-13
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: ‘Risen’ rises above your standard biblical mystery-thriller