SON OF GOD

Here's the case for going. SON OF GOD tells the story of Christ's ministry, death, and resurrection with excellent acting and a genuinely powerful ending — the kind of filmmaking that can change how you see the Gospel, even if you've heard it a hundred times.

It isn't flawless. The first half moves episodically rather than as one story, some biblical scenes and dialogue feel truncated, and a few lines that would have sharpened the film's theology — Thomas's confession, Christ's words about giving His life as a ransom, a fuller Great Commission — are missing or underplayed. These are craft quibbles, not moral ones.

The content itself is clean: no foul language, no sexual content, only wine and upper male nudity. The violence, though, is real — brutal, bloody, and appropriate to the Passion it depicts. Bring your friends and family, saved and unsaved. This one is worth the trip.

John narrates God's covenant with Israel as Rome tightens its grip on the land. After the birth of Jesus, the story jumps thirty years ahead: Jesus calls Peter to join a mission that will change the world, and soon finds Himself in open conflict with the Pharisees over His teaching and miracles. As Passover approaches, tension between Rome and the Jewish leadership mounts — and Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, straight into it.

Four stars means the reviewer found this one of the stronger biblical epics in recent memory, weaknesses and all. The acting carries the film throughout, and the ending — the Passion and resurrection sequences — lands with real power. The conflict between Jesus and both Jewish and Roman leadership plays out with genuine dramatic strength.

The cost is structural: the first half is too episodic, moving scene to scene without the connective narration that would tie it together, and some biblical episodes and dialogue feel compressed. It's not an encyclopedic retelling of the Gospels, and some theological richness — the layered meaning of the Last Supper, in particular — gets simplified for modern ears. But the film opens strongly, closes stronger, and the resurrection sequence is described as the best of it.

This is, at its core, a film about the Gospel — the death and resurrection of Christ as the overwhelming, glorious proof of God's love. It affirms the deity of Jesus overtly throughout, and treats betrayal and greed, embodied in Judas, as what they are: sin.

Where it falls short is in depth rather than direction. The dialogue is rendered in modern vernacular, which smooths over some of the Gospels' theological texture — the Last Supper's rich fulfillment of Jewish liturgical tradition goes unexplored, Thomas never speaks his climactic confession of Christ's deity, and Jesus's own words about coming to "give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45) aren't given their full weight. The Great Commission, too, could have been rendered more fully. None of these are worldview failures — they're missed opportunities to say what the film already believes even more clearly.

What the film ultimately points to is the ache every human heart carries — the need for a love strong enough to die for us. Scripture names it directly: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).

SON OF GOD stumbles in structure but never in substance — an excellent, moving telling of the Gospel that earns its four stars and its place on family movie night, provided your children are old enough for the Passion's brutality. Our verdict stands: WORTH THE TRIP — AGES 13 AND UP. Bring your friends and family, saved and unsaved.