Joseph Fiennes has faith ‘Risen’ will please all

Joseph Fiennes plays Clavius, assigned to investigate the disappearance of Jesus’ body. He doesn’t find it because, as you may remember from Sunday school, He is risen. Bad movies work in mysterious ways. Among these: Soul Surfer, the true story of surf champion Bethany Hamilton, who staged a comeback after losing her arm to a shark, and the cop movie Courageous. In a way, it can be seen as a cousin to 1959’s “Ben Hur”. But that was the 1950s, and this is 2016.

At that, any hope that the clever concept behind Risen might produce a clever movie is thrown to the ground, where it lies quivering for the next hour or so, before expiring noisily in the film’s second half. Writers and directors sometimes play fast and loose with the source material, leaving out crucial details and inventing some weird stuff. It just was a tiny bit of nuance but it came out of that talk with the detective. He is extremely intelligent-I loved his films and identify a lot with them. But then the body disappears which gets everyone upset. Because a film hitting theaters this weekend proves that swords-and-sandals productions based on the Bible can still hold their own against “Ben Hur”.

“Risen”, is written and directed by Kevin Reynolds, he directed “Waterworld”, “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” and the Emmy-winning, “Hatfield & McCoys”. Spoiler alert: They don’t find it. Fiennes is tribune Clavius, who answers to scheming Roman bureaucrat Pilate (Peter Firth), a man overly concerned with the optics of his political career.

And so they get none.

Of course Clavius, a good Roman military man, doesn’t think anything of Jesus. No wonder Clavius is so enamored by him. For Clavius, that’s when all Heaven breaks loose. At times Jesus is with his disciples while at other times he’s completely absent.

The film progresses from there much like a police procedural. Curtis, who stars in the AMC series “Fear the Walking Dead”, gets only a few scenes and makes only a mild impression.

That’s when our tribune has an encounter that shakes his pagan worldview to the core. Did I say it was overwrought?

Alas, “Risen” is told mostly from the point of view of Clavius (a bulked-up Joseph Fiennes, covered with sweat and blood most of the movie, like a light-heavyweight version of Russell Crowe in “Gladiator”), an original character with no Biblical origins I can unearth.

I think I’m always looking for authenticity and modernity because that’s where the audience is at. He examines the evidence in the tomb, including the Shroud of Turin, which will be puzzling skeptics for millennia to come. But the evidence is just too strong.

A fundamental tenet of Christianity is the belief that Jesus rose from the dead three days after being crucified.

The group also gives the film high marks for its faith-compatible depiction of situations, faith-compatible depiction of characters and character relationships, entertainment value, and overall Biblical relevance.

The movie revolves around the epic biblical story of the Resurrection of Jesus, told through the eyes of a non-believer. “I recommend it for every Christian to take their friends to see Risen”. Faith-based films aren’t the most respected films in Hollywood, and while some would decry that it is because our society is less God-fearing, I say it’s because they’re typically of poor quality, preaching one-sided messages that only seek to preach to the choir.

No, you don’t. This is definitely a new fresh take.