Bloody Hell

A religious film? From The Bible? It's oh so easy to turn your secular noses up at Mel Gibson's latest effort, writing it off before it's made as the pious proselytising of a devout catholic. After all, does anyone really want to be preached at? Surely we get enough of that from the various nutters shouting through megaphones and thrusting their pamphlets at us as we carefully try to navigate through Covent Garden. But hold your pale horses for a second. Before you write off The Passion as the kind of Bible-bashery that put you right off Sunday school, take a look at the latest trailer and you might just be pleasantly surprised. Appearing (miraculously?) on Aintitcool, the first glimpse of this Christian paen reveals it to be something far more than expected by the cynical masses. Emotive, powerful and heart-wrenching, The Passion actually seems to draw you back to the turn of the first century, fully conveying the horror and profound sorrow of the gospel story - and that's just the trailer! Displaying torture, humiliation and buckets of blood (we defy you not to wince at the cross-nailing scene) Gibson's take on the story has none of the hippy-locks 'n' haloes feel that you get from Easter church services. Indeed, devout or no, this film doesn't look like one for those of lesser constitutions. True it's all in Aramaic and Latin so only theological scholars will be able to see past the (reluctantly added) subtitles, but Jim Caviezel's performance as JC himself looks to be truly astounding and, while the Catholic church will doubtless find a dozen reasons to hate it, The Passion has just made our list of films that can't be missed.