RISEN (Kevin Reynolds). 107 minutes. Opens Friday (February 12). See listings. Rating: NN
Here’s a nifty premise: a cynical detective is tasked to find the body of a cult leader, which has gone missing shortly after his death. Tracking down his followers, our hero discovers them not heartbroken but overjoyed at their leader’s resurrection.
The twist? The whole story is set in ancient Judea. That detective? He’s a Roman tribune. The cult leader? You may have heard of him – Jesus Christ.
The idea of a disinterested Roman investigating the disappearance of the body of Jesus is a good one: it’s the premise of the 1987 drama The Inquiry, with Keith Carradine as a Roman inquisitor charged by Pontius Pilate (Harvey Keitel) to figure out what happened to that pesky Nazarene a few years after his death. That film was remade in 2006 as The Final Inquiry.
Risen comes up with a more immediate angle on the story, opening with Christ’s crucifixion and spanning the week or so after his death, but it’s not very good. Like most films targeted at religious audiences, it’s not really about exploring its story, but about confirming what they already believe.
At least director/co-writer Kevin Reynolds plays fair, establishing the film’s worshipful tone with the opening titles (awed music, glorious light) and telling us from the get-go that the dogged investigator Clavius (a dusty Joseph Fiennes) will be changed by what he discovers.
Reynolds, whose credits include the charming Fandango and the 90s tentpoles Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves and Waterworld, delivers a stolid, grindingly dull drama, coating his actors in blood and sand for realism and more or less leaving it at that.
The religious aspects of Risen aren’t performed they’re recited. It’s the sort of movie where the actors have been instructed to telegraph every familiar action: when Pontius Pilate washes his hands in a scene, Peter Firth makes sure we see exactly what he’s doing. The apostle Simon (Joe Manjón) is really enthusiastic about fishing long before he’s actually charged with being a fisher of men. And so forth. It’s an evangelical elbow to the ribs, over and over again.
What’s missing is any sense of mystery, theological or otherwise. Risen is content to recount the Gospels without bringing them to life, settling for a series of dioramas rather than a sense of how it felt to be in Judea at that point in time, or what it would be like to be made to confront one’s beliefs in the face of something inexplicable.
Even Hail, Caesar! let George Clooney squint against the grandeur.
