The Passion of the Christ
Newmarket Films | Release Date: February 25, 2004 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
47
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 44 Critic Reviews
Positive:
15
Mixed:
20
Negative:
9
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
This is not a sermon or a homily, but a visualization of the central event in the Christian religion. Take it or leave it. Read full review
90
L.A. WeeklyScott Foundas
Gibson has made a big, bold, nightmarishly beautiful film not just about the dawn of the Christian faith, but about the awful tendency of human communities (wherever and whenever in the world they may exist) toward self-preservation, intolerance and mob rule. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
A gripping, powerful motion picture -- arguably the most forceful depiction of Jesus' death ever to be committed to film. It leaves an indelible imprint on the psyche; viewers of this movie may never look at a crucifix in quite the same way. Read full review
80
VarietyTodd McCarthy
If an age produces the renditions of classic stories that reflect those times, then The Passion of the Christ, which is violent, contentious, emotional, extreme and highly proficient, must be the Jesus movie for this era. Read full review
80
TimeRichard Corliss
A serious, handsome, excruciating film that radiates total commitment. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
It's a strange kind of spiritual movie -- one that aims for the gut more often than the heart. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
Tempting as it may be to dismiss Mel Gibson as a glorified pain freak, dressing up a martyrdom fantasy in Aramaic and Latin, it would be more accurate, I think, to say that the filmmaker, a Catholic fundamentalist, presents his torture-racked vision of Jesus' last 12 hours on earth as a sacred form of shock therapy. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia Puig
There is enlightenment -- even stark poetry -- in The Passion. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
Stunning in its violence and fascinating in its ironbound focus. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Powerfully moving and fanatically obtuse in equal doses. The typical star rating doesn't apply, because scenes range from classic to poor and all stops in between. Read full review
75
New York PostLou Lumenick
A highly personal, provocative and in some ways riveting vision with an inspired performance by Jim Caviezel as Jesus. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
It's not the most flattering depiction of Jews I've seen. Still, The Passion of the Christ is something of a masterpiece, terrible to behold, unfit for children, certainly, but very much the work of a director in the throes of his own distinct passion. Read full review
63
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
The main message of this drama is driven home with emotional hammer blows. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Seems to be exactly the movie Mel Gibson wanted to make as an abiding profession of his traditionalist Catholic faith. On that score it is a success. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
More spirit and grace and less blood and guts may be what Passion needs. Read full review
60
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
The film is never dull -- no mean feat, given that it spends two hours telling a story whose end is widely known -- and features performances that range from coarsely effective to phenomenal. Read full review
60
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
Even within what often looks like a self-indulgent exercise in humiliation, pain and gratuitous gore, there is no denying the moments of genuine and powerful feeling in The Passion of the Christ -- some of which, by the way, evoke Jesus's most profound teachings of Jewish principles. Read full review
60
EmpireIan Nathan
A tormented movie about torment; loopy, over-reaching and occasionally suspicious. Simultaneously, it is a daring artistic endeavour. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Expertly made, thanks largely to Jim Caviezel's fervent portrayal of Jesus and Caleb Deschanel's skillful camera work. But the film contains little to learn from, unless one is unfamiliar with basic Christian history. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
Too much Good Friday and not enough Easter Sunday. Emphasizing Jesus' agony over His ecstasy, Gibson has delivered a blood-drenched epic more stunning for its brutal violence than for its depiction of the calvary. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
The Passion of the Christ should have left audiences in a state of exaltation. Instead it just leaves audiences exhausted. Read full review
50
SalonStephanie Zacharek
Mel Gibson may have changed the face of cinema forever. I think he has: He's made the first true Jesusploitation flick, a picture that, despite its self-righteous air of grave religiosity, is barely spiritual at all. Read full review
50
Washington PostMichael O'Sullivan
Controversial, yet undeniably powerful. Read full review
50
ConsequenceClint Worthington
It may exhaust you, it may offend you; it may guide you through Hell into something more revelatory. And how you receive the film may depend greatly on how you feel about the man who made it. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
Gibson's intense concentration on the scourging and whipping of the physical body virtually denies any metaphysical significance to the most famous half-day in history. Read full review
50
NewsweekDavid Ansen
Instead of being moved by Christ's suffering, or awed by his sacrifice, I felt abused by a filmmaker intent on punishing an audience, for who knows what sins. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
In effect, aspects of Gibson's creative makeup -- his career-long interest in martyrdom and the yearning for dramatic conflict that make him an excellent actor, coupled with his belief in the Gospels' literal truth -- have sideswiped this film. What is left is a film so narrowly focused as to be inaccessible for all but the devout. Read full review
42
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
Did it move me? And the answer is no. I thought it has a certain ghoulish, voyeuristic fascination, but I found it strangely remote and uninvolving on both emotional and spiritual levels. Read full review
40
The New York TimesDana Stevens
On its own, apart from whatever beliefs a viewer might bring to it, The Passion of the Christ never provides a clear sense of what all of this bloodshed was for, an inconclusiveness that is Mr. Gibson's most serious artistic failure. Read full review
40
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
X-ploitative though it may be, the spectacle of a man beaten and tortured to death seeks to be an object of contemplation. Serious questions are raised. Read full review
40
Dallas ObserverRobert Wilonsky
It's too turgid to awe the nonbelievers, too zealous to inspire and often too silly to take seriously, with its demonic hallucinations that look like escapees from a David Lynch film; I swear I couldn't find the devil carrying around a hairy-backed midget anywhere in the text I read. Read full review
40
Film ThreatJay Bliznick
Who is this film for? It’s for the Christian followers who haven’t really read their scripture. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
What I do know is that I was gripped for a while by the strength of Mr. Gibson's filmmaking, only to be repelled and eventually excluded by his literalist insistence on excruciation. There is watching in horror, and there is watching in horror. Read full review
40
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
The $25 million of his own that Gibson is said to have put into this film may be conscience money, and the savagery in the picture may--consciously or not--be Gibson's way of saying that violence is not always valueless. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
It isn't just the violence that is overplayed. There is so much creepy-Gothic Sturm und Drang in The Passion that at times it seems as if Clive Barker should get credit for the story along with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Read full review
38
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Gibson mounts a convincing crucifixion, but his victim is the audience. The Passion of the Christ aims its metallic cat-o'-nine-tails at the viewers' nerves. Read full review
30
Film ThreatRick Kisonak
While it fails to shed significant new light on its subject, Gibson's film and the all-Jesus-all-the-time attention from the media it's attracted do tell us something somewhat disconcerting about the state of American culture: That the way to make a religion based on love and forgiveness relevant today is to turn it into violent entertainment. Read full review
30
The New YorkerDavid Denby
By embracing the Roman pageant so openly, using all the emotional resources of cinema, Gibson has cancelled out the redemptive and transfiguring power of art. [1 March 2004, p. 84]
25
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
The visual big top is the scourging and the crucifixion -- again and again, Gibson returns to the blood-letting. Again and again, we're exposed to the clinical repetition of a single act, until an alleged act of passion comes to seem boring and passionless. Is that not a definition of pornography? Read full review
25
PremiereGlenn Kenny
From my perspective, the film's anti-Semitism is implicit rather than programmatic, and, in the film's current form, a little sneaky. Read full review
25
New York Daily NewsJami Bernard
Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is the most virulently anti-Semitic movie made since the German propaganda films of World War II. It is sickening. Read full review
20
SlateDavid Edelstein
This is a two-hour-and-six-minute snuff movie -- The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre -- that thinks it's an act of faith. Read full review
20
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
Gibson makes sure that no blow remains unfelt, and his approach can't help but stir the body, but he never touches the soul. Read full review
10
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
If I were a Christian, I'd be appalled to have this primitive and pornographic bloodbath presume to speak for me. Read full review
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