PASSIONS are running high over The Passion Of The Christ, just as they did when Mel Gibson was economical with the truth of the William Wallace story in Braveheart and went bashing the English again in the American Revolution epic The Patriot.

The difference here is that he is playing even higher stakes, re-telling the greatest story ever told in the gospel according to Mel Gibson.

The Hollywood star has embraced the Roman Catholic faith, and his leading man, Jim Caviezel, is on record as a devout Catholic too, and there is no doubting their serious, earnest reasons for making this powerful, bloody and grim film.

The religious arguments are addressed elsewhere in tonight's Evening Press. This review is judging the merits of The Passion Of The Christ as a film for a multiplex generation gauged on popcorn violence and blockbuster special effects.

We have had Keanu Reeves's messianic Neo - the One - in the mind-game Matrix trilogy, and now we have Jesus, the real One.

Not that this is a Jesus Christ Superstar or Godspell for the 21st century age, nor is Gibson seeking to shock with sexual speculation in the manner of Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation Of Christ.

Instead, with an obsessive mind, Gibson charts the last 12 hours of Jesus Christ's life, almost in the manner fly-on-the-wall documentary with a blow by blow, whip-by-whip account of Christ's journey to death. There is little breathing space for what might be called back story, only the occasional flashback that leaves Gibson too many chapters short of a full gospel.

No matter how well known the Bible story is, the story depicted here needs more of a context, and instead it is too simplistic, too sketched and ultimately too negative. No wonder Gibson was asked to add a coda in which the stone is rolled away, and the ministry of Jesus begins beyond his physical death (by way of contrast with the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, which ends with Christ dying on the cross and no encore).

Gibson is seeking authenticity, not in terms of authorship of the story, but in presenting the world of Jesus as realistically as possible, even using Aramaic and Latin dialogue with subtitles. He spares nothing in depicting the treatment and humiliation and crucifixion, with the aid of state-of-the-art prosthetics and make-up. The sight of flesh being ripped from Christ's body by a blood-spattered, sadistic Roman soldier will dwell in the memory, but what is the purpose of such blood and gore?

Unlike The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it is not for cheap, scary thrills. Gibson, who wielded one of the hammers that drove the nails into Christ's hand in his movie, is nailing home the point that we are still failing to learn the lessons of history in our age of conflict and conflagrations.

He nails the weak Pilate, the barbaric Roman soldiers and the greedy Pharasees alike, but he also makes Caviezel's agonised Christ too one dimensional.

The colours, the blood and water, are the stuff of Italian Renaissance art; the androgynous Satan figure a more mysterious motif in the manner of that child in Schindler's List. Such detail would have benefited Caviezel's Jesus too.

Updated: 15:59 Thursday, March 25, 2004