“The Passion of the Christ” is one religious movie that parents aren’t going to want their children to see in Sunday school.Although the movie was “tastefully” done, it was filled with violence, torture, and obviously a crucifixion, which were all prolonged events that lasted just a tad bit longer than they should have. Move over “Fight Club,” you have nothing on the violence shown in “Passion.”It’s understandable why Mel Gibson wanted to show so much blood. It is stated that Jesus died in a lot of pain for the sins of all mankind. But Gibson went a bit overboard.Yes, he had people crying in their seats and shaking their heads at the fact that something as horrible as the lasts hours of Christ had to happen. But why the excess? It feels like a good three-fourths of the movie audiences are just watching Jesus die as Satan watches over in delight. What about Jesus’ life? What about his messages? All of that was skimmed over in quick flashbacks.It is also understandable why Jewish people were afraid of what this movie might invoke on people’s feelings toward the Jewish community. Jew’s are portrayed in “Passion” as a cynical, almost evil, group of people who didn’t want Jesus tortured-they wanted him dead. Not banished, just dead. They even chose to have a convicted serial killer released back into the streets instead of a freshly beaten, and almost fleshless, Jesus.Some people may say, “Well, hey, that’s what happened.”The problem is that there is a huge difference between reading what happened in the Bible and watching it come to life in a Hollywood movie. Visuals raise stronger emotions than words do.What also might catch people’s attention is the portrayal of Jesus by James Caviezel. He did a fantastic job in this controversial part that some actors would have died for while others would have run from as if it were the plague. He most likely put a lot of pressure on himself to do the part perfectly as he was supposedly struck by lightening during the filming. While it does seem that everything he went through was worth it, his acting was still superb.Even with Caviezel’s great portrayal of “the son of God,” one may question how Jesus comes off in the movie. You can take away two things from Mel Gibson’s interpretation of Jesus: 1) Either he was the Son of God and had an unbelievable connection to the heavens or 2) He was just plain insane.During a good portion of the movie Jesus seems to be on another plane of existence. He doesn’t always seem to be quite there. Today, anyone with the symptoms of hearing voices and an ability to talk to God would be thrown in an asylum quicker than you can say, “He’s the Messiah!”All in all the entire movie can be viewed as a success. It would have been nice to see Jesus’ life, but that isn’t what Mel Gibson chose to show people. Gibson preferred to showJesus’ death for whatever reason.”Passion” will most likely go down as one of the most controversial religious movies of our time, and will definitely be the talk around office water coolers for the next few weeks. One can only hope that people can keep calm when it comes to such a controversial topic. Religion isn’t something that people take lightly, as was proven by Jesus himself.