Review: 'Risen' Is a Dull Biblical Tale
John Allegretti ’18 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer
What’s interesting is how closely Risen follows the tropes of a buddy cop detective movie. You have the grizzled, loose cannon cop who gets partnered up with a younger, by-the-book officer to solve a crazy mystery. By this logic Risen should be a seriously entertaining movie, but the film never becomes interesting or engaging. Risen is a movie written for a religious audience, but it also seems to be for people who haven’t heard about the resurrection of Jesus. It’s a film with a lot of style and good intentions, but it lacks any heart. Instead of characters undergoing changes because of the spectacular events around them, they just exclaim “Wow! Look at that!” and move on.
Risen is directed by Kevin Reynolds, a guy who people know from the Kevin Costner vehicles of the 90’s such as Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Waterworld. This is his first film in a decade and is for the most part, a competent production. The cinematography is good, the blocking solid, but Risen’s visuals are far from rich. Reynolds fails to use basic elements like rain, fire, dust, or wind to convey emotion or grit in most scenes. When you take these things out of a film it ends up becoming less of a movie and more of a clean and sterile product. There are exceptions to this if you’re making something like a dystopian science fiction film, but Risen never feels as realistic or emotional as a movie set 2000 years ago should feel.
Overall Grade: D+
Watch The Trailer:
[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxgm2TJr2m0[/embedyt]