I appreciate your viewpoint, Calanthe, but I'm not going to see that film. I'm never going to see it. First off, from what I know of it, it is not honest or true. It could only be true if you believe that this man was some kind of superhuman, because no human in the world could survive that kind of treatment for more than a couple of hours. And secondly, because I'm not into sadism. To me, two hours of watching a man get beaten to death is sadism, pure and simple. I won't see it for the same reason I've never seen Raging Bull, despite knowing that it's a classic film that most serious filmgoers admire. I have no desire to abet that kind of filmmaking, no matter how passionate some folks may be about it. I'm glad you get something out of it, but I would only get two hours of horror that would take me a long time to scrub out of my brain.

A moviegoer I know who has the same view as me said something interesting, to the effect that had Gibson made a trilogy of films about Jesus, with this one as the last piece, it would have had a context that made the violence understandable and perhaps (perhaps) even appropriate. As it stands, I can see no reason why I should force myself to sit through such an ordeal. I am not a Christian, and thus have no religious call to fill my head with such images. (Hell, I was raised Catholic, and even as a child I understood how sadistic and gory that faith can get.)

I could go on about the place of violence in art, and the necessity of balance in a story, and the problems of overkill in the context of religious fanaticism, but I think I've made myself fairly clear already. And you know what? It makes me sad. I was so looking forward to that film, especially when I heard Caviezel was going to play the role. If there's any actor alive born to do it, it was him, and this is the film he chose to do it in. *sigh*