IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (R. Abele) review
RogerEbert.com () review
AVClub (M. D'Angelo) review
America Magazine interview with writer/director
Paul: Apostle of Christ [2018] (directed and screenplay cowritten by Andrew Hyatt along with Terence Berden) is in my opinion the best Christian religious based movie to be released in cinemas in the United States since Son of God [2014]. Why? Because it tells the compelling story of the last days of the Apostle St. Paul, who was beheaded in Rome during the first great persecution of Christians there under the Emperor Nero, without feeling any need to "jazz things up." And why would there be a need? Here was an authentic Christian hero, still leading / inspiring a community of authentic Christian heroes. There was no need to turn the film into a "First Century CSI" or to have a contemporary writer "re-imagine" the childhood years of "The Young Messiah."
Indeed, as I was watching the film, I thought immediately of several other stories of early Christian saints that could easily be make into compelling dramas -- those of (1) St. Justin Martyr another early Christian saint from Rome who was martyred a few centuries after St. Paul during the actual height of the Christian persecutions there, (2) St. Felicitas and Perpetua, two women Christian martyrs, friends, one was actually a recent convert, who were among those literally fed to the lions at a sporting event at roughly the same time as St. Justin was martyred, (3) St. Callixtus, who even though he led the Church of Rome still during times of enormous persecution and eventually died for the Faith, became the first Pope who was not universally recognized as the Pope by the Christian community there (apparently some Christians of the time simply _refused_ to follow a leader who had once been a slave. He did in fact create the first Christian "credit union" which he created to help Rome's slaves buy their freedom, and became the first Christian leader to be "investigated" for possible "financial irregularities" by ... his aghast more "conservative / traditionalist" Christian opponents). His primary Christian opponent at the time St. Hippolytus ended up being martyred at the same time as he (the Pagans not drawing distinctions between Christians of one stripe or another ... ;-); (4) St. Lawrence, a Deacon in the 200s, who when the Pope Sixtus II was arrested while saying Mass in one of the Catacombs in Rome, was asked by Rome's authorities to deliver-up "all the riches of the Christian Community of Rome" (again, they had that Credit Union by then ...) to pay as ransom. Instead, St. Lawrence gathered together all the Christian community's elderly and orphans and presented them to Rome's authorities as the "Community's True Riches." Needless to say, St. Lawrence was taken-away and martyred in a particularly brutal way -- roasted on a grill. The Saint, remembered to the day as the Patron Saint of Comedians, is said to have told the Romans roasting him: "I think you can flip me over, I think I'm done on that side" ;-).
So, if the makers of the current film were up to it, they could really do an excellent job in bringing a good deal of these stories of the early Christian Saints to the screen as well!
To the current film ... the story plays out in Rome under the Emperor Nero during the first great persecution of Christians in Rome. About half the city had burned down due to a fire that many have suggested was set on orders of Nero himself (to make way for his own building projects). To deflect attention, he blamed the Christians, then a new religious sect arriving in Rome only a decade or two earlier. As a result Christians were arrested, crucified, killed by wild animals in sports arenas for sport and covered in pitch and set on fire to provide lighting.
Among those Christians martyred were St. Peter who apparently was crucified in the middle of the Circus Vaticanus (the obelisk in the center of today's St. Peter's Square, while apparently moved a few hundred feet to its present location, had served as one of the end posts on on the Circus Vaticanus race track at the time) and, of course, St. Paul. Note here that since St. Paul had Roman citizenship, he could not be crucified in the way that foreigners and slaves were. He ultimately was beheaded near what is today the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls.
In the film here, St. Paul (played in the film by James Faulkner) had already been arrested and was held in a prison somewhere by the Roman Forum. St. Luke (played in the film by Jim Caviezel) who had been a missionary companion of St. Paul, and later the writer of both the Gospel According to Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, managed to get into Rome with help of Priscilla and Aquila (a Roman Christian couple mentioned repeatedly in Paul's letters and played in the film by Joanne Whalley and John Lynch respectively) with the purpose of getting one last opportunity to talk to his mentor and to get his facts straight while St. Paul was still alive prior to setting the Acts of the Apostles to paper. The rest of the story unspools from there...
Contemporary Viewers are invited to reflect on an ancient aspect of Christianity often utterly forgotten in the current day -- that Christians in the first centuries were _pacifists_. Viewers in the current film are invited to hear some frustrations of the younger of the Christians of the time, personified most strongly in the character of a certain young "Cassius" (played by Alessandro Sperduti), who wished to FIGHT BACK against the Romans who were beating and arresting so many good Christians and sending them to their deaths, often for sport.
Yet the Christian leadership from Priscilla and Aquila to Paul already in Prison was unwavering: DON'T RESIST EVIL WITH EVIL even if it results in one's own death. There's a scene in the film when arrested Christians presumably facing the lions only a few moments hence were assured by their leaders: "Don't worry, it will hurt, but only for a moment, soon you'll be in the presence of God."
And, minor spoiler alert, St. Paul, goes to his death with the same conviction and in a similar way.
Dear Readers, consider now that a few years ago, American Sniper [2014] was released ON CHRISTMAS DAY without a hardly peep of protest from the Christian / Catholic Community in the United States. How times have changed! And honestly, Christians / Catholics should ask themselves if this change has been a particularly "good" one? Is it really Christian / Catholic to dehumanize "the Enemy"? Or are we all supposed to be ultimately children of the same God?
So here is a truly excellent and thought provoking CHRISTIAN and CATHOLIC film (the writer / director is Catholic), challenging us to take seriously our faith and to be brave in our challenge to contemporary society. If we are to be "pro-Life" we need to be so consistently.
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