A CENTURION IS CONVERTED IN RISEN
Risen is a Christian redemption film, released during Lent. Governor Pontius Pilate (played by Peter Firth) is assigned to keep order in Palestine, where Jews are in revolt. The Pharisees urge Pilate to kill Jesus (Cliff Curtis) in order to avoid unrest from yet another movement of religious fanatics, and Pilate consents. But Pilate later agrees to have Jesus’s body placed in a tomb, whereupon the Pharisees warn that his followers may try to steal the body, so the tomb is sealed with a stone so big and heavy that several Roman soldiers are required to move the stone over the door of the tomb. Yet one day two Roman guards awake to find the tomb open, and the body has disappeared. Now Pilate assigns his top centurion, Clavius (Joseph Fiennes), to locate the body in order to avoid chaos when the emperor visits in a few days. However, when Clavius tracks down Jesus in a meeting with his disciplines, he realizes that a miracle has indeed occurred and is mesmerized. Soldiers try to arrest the disciplines, Clavius helps them escape, and several other Biblical events occur. The film is intended to inspire faith, but director Kevin Reynolds’s major flaw is to depict Clavius as whispering almost inaudibly throughout the film, something contrary to the requirements of a commander of thousands of troops during a battle early in the film, so the apparent hero of the film is depicted as if converted and humbled even before he first knows about Jesus. MH