Review of Killing Jesus

Well, I must admit I got sucked in because Kelsey Grammar was hyped in the ads as part of the cast. The made-for-TV film started out interesting, in a way, with Kelsey stumbling manically with throbbing boiled forehead o'er the ramparts of Jerusalem. OK. He is sufficiently disturbed, and does an OK job. What else do you want from Herod? Next, we get a believable-looking Jesus. Yeah, somebody who could be from that region of the world, not some white-washed European version on a holy card. Oh, some may say, but that ain't the Jesus I pray to. No? I think Jesus was Afro-Asian or Hamito-Semitic, not a bearded Caucasian. There is a difference. Anyway... Good casting, but his wig was frightful. Didn't look like real hair at all. Was that on purpose? The story actually started out pretty good. It seemed like this wasn't going to be just a simple parroting of the story many, many people know by heart. There was character development in the beginning and interesting interaction between the characters, but then as the story progressed, it was as if the plot got away with everyone and things were hurried up and sped up to get to the conclusion. One weirdness is that when Jesus changes Simon's name to Peter, one of the (what I thought was one of the lesser educated) apostles says in an aside to another apostle (and so the audience gets the reference) that Peter is the Greek word for "rock". Well, aside from the fact that there is some debate on the real Jesus' knowledge of Greek vs. poetic license of the authors of the gospels, it was interesting what the script writer and director "left in" and what they "left out" of this Biblical depiction of Jesus' life. I also found the last scene in which Peter gets a boat- load of fish like once before and deduces that "He is risen" or does he say "He's back!"? laughable.