Son of God is brutal but redemptive

Liberty Theatre

Son of God

***

Stars: Diogo Morgado, Amber Rose Revah, Sebastian Knapp.  

Director: Christopher Spencer.

Rated: PG-13

Showing: Fri-Sat 2pm, 6pm, 9:15pm; Sun 2pm, 5:30pm; Mon-Thurs 2:30pm, 6:30pm.

Runtime: 138 minutes

Drama.

Blame Mel Gibson for it if you like, but no Jesus movie these days is worth its salt without an utterly unflinching treatment of his torture and crucifixion. And Son of God has stretches where the agony we watch this poor man endure is avert-your-eyes awful. 

If history ever produced a more excruciating form of punishment, it probably included lions at dinner time.

But Son of God, a big-screen version of Mark Burnett and Roma Downey’s History Channel TV series The Bible, has a redemptive optimism about it that makes the brutality go down easier. Their Jesus may be all business. But he sports a beatific smile as he renders unto audiences lines that feel like rough drafts of the polished poetry of the King James Bible.

“I’ll give my stone to the first man who tells me he has not sinned” doesn’t have the memorable ring of “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. But that’s what Shakespearean editors can do for you.

It’s a standard-issue Christ picture — hitting the high points from Jesus (Diogo Morgado) taking that first fishing trip with Peter (Darwin Shaw) to Lazarus to “Where’s Judas?” to “Give us Barabbas” and the long, final walk.

Unlike The Passion of the Christ, there’s no Aramaic with English subtitles, a lot less blood and no anti-Semitism. No character feels like a caricature — not the hypocritical Pharisee Caiaphas (Adrian Schiller) or the gruff and dismissive Pontius Pilate (Greg Hicks of Snow White and the Huntsman). But it’s also dramatically flat, with few actors who make an impression as they play saints and sinners, the icons of the Bible. 

Neptune Theatre

3 Days to Kill

***

Stars: Kevin Costner, Hailee Steinfeld, Connie Nielsen, Amber Heard.   

Director: Joseph McGinty ‘McG’ Nichol

Rated: PG-13

Showing: Fri-Sat 7:30pm; Sun 5:30pm; Mon-Thurs 7pm.

Runtime: 85 minutes

Action, crime, drama

Kevin Costner and the director McG are plunged into the madcap mayhem of Monsieur Luc Besson in 3 Days to Kill, a serio-comic thriller about mortality, murder for hire and fatherhood. Besson, who morphed into a producer after The Professional and before The Transporter, gives Costner the full Liam Neeson in Taken treatment, cashing in on a career of cool in a movie that moves almost fast enough to keep us from noticing how scruffy, discomfiting and absurdly over-the-top the whole thing is. 

Speciality Theatre

Non-Stop

**

Stars: Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, Lupita Nyong’o

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra. 

Rated: PG-13

Showing: Fri 2:15pm, 6pm, 9pm; Sat 2:30pm, 7:15pm,  9:45pm; Sun 2:15pm,  6:45pm, 9:15pm; Mon-Thurs 2:15pm, 6pm, 8:30pm.

Runtime: 106 minutes

Action, mystery, thriller.

OK, Liam Neeson, we get it.

You’re a 61-year-old guy who can bust heads and snap arms with the best of them. And, yes, it worked like a charm in Taken —  which packed the punch of surprise because who knew the guy from Schindler’s List was such a brawler? But the halo of goodwill from that film is starting to tarnish. How many of these types of movies is Neeson going to make?

Which brings us to his latest, Non-Stop, an efficiently made exercise in airplane claustrophobia that takes off well enough but then crash lands in the third act under the weight of its red herrings, improbability and plot twists. It’s not a complete waste of time, but it is a waste of an extremely talented cast including Julianne Moore, Scoot McNairy (Argo), Michelle Dockery (Downton Abbey), Corey Stoll (House of Cards), Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave), and, of course, Neeson.

For all of its flaws, though, Non-Stop does generate more scares and suspense than another recent Neeson skull-knocker, the abysmal Taken 2. But the really terrifying thing is what’s on the list of Neeson’s upcoming projects: Taken 3. It looks like “non-stop” is also the phrase that sums up the trajectory of Neeson’s career these days. 

The Lego Movie

****

Stars: Will Arnett, Elizabeth Banks, Will Ferrell. 

Directors: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller.

Rated: PG

Showing: Fri 1pm, 5:45pm; Sat 2:15pm, 4:45pm; Sun  1:30pm, 4:30pm; Mon-Thurs  5:45pm.

Runtime: 100 minutes

Animation, action, comedy.

A comedy that works! An animated film with a look — a kinetic aesthetic honouring its product line’s bright, brick-like origins — that isn’t like every other clinically rounded and bland digital 3-D effort.  

A movie that works for the Lego-indebted parent as well as the Lego-crazed offspring. A movie that will work even if you don’t give a rip about Lego. 

About Last Night

***

Stars: Kevin Hart, Michael Ealy, Regina Hall

Directors: Steve Pink. 

Rated: R

Showing: Fri 3pm, 8:30pm, 10:45pm; Sat 4:30pm, 6:45pm, 9pm; Sun 4pm, 6:30pm; 9pm; Thurs 2:30pm, 8:15pm.

Runtime: 100 minutes

Comedy, romance.

Kevin Hart brings his “A” game to About Last Night. He is paired up with Regina Hall, who gives as good as she gets in this  raunchy romantic African-American remake of the 1986 Rob Lowe / Demi Moore romance based on David Mamet’s play Sexual Perversity in Chicago. 

ALL REVIEWS BY MCT