Saint Paul (2000)

Just perfect...

Beautiful, moving film.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

We start this movie with a Pharisee (Saul) and a Saducee (Reuben) wrestling, Greek style.That's only the first of other apparent liberties the producers took with this movie. Peter is then represented as a doubting Thomas (after the Lord Jesus has risen from the dead and ascended into Heaven!) who just doesn't know how to go on with the "mission".Pentecost is shown fairly accurately, except for the fact that no one rushes to see what the commotion is about, the apostles do not speak in tongues, and the movie just moves to a still doubting Peter, who decides on the spur of the moment to preach to some random Jews, out of whom he makes three converts vs the biblical account of more than 3,000. No one is baptized in the manner any Jew would expect (full immersion) from a proselyte. Those were enough blatant inaccuracies for me to turn the movie off. After reading about the fictional Reuben and the unnecessary nudity in other reviews, I'm glad I did.

Didn't expect much from this because I had heard it had some extra biblical content. I wasn't too bothered about that as all the other bible series movies had their extra scenes. It certainly wasn't terrible there was some pretty decent parts. It was well filmed and had great music. Acting was great. I found they portrayed Saul/Paul as quite nice before he snapped. Suddenly he just went evil when not long before had not wanted to stone Stephen...I didn't like that as it just didn't make sense. Stephen's vision of heaven was erased completely!!! Also, no tongues when the Holy Spirit came to the apostles either! Paul does wrestle which I knew was in this by others reviews. Pretty stupid but none of these bible collection films (by Lube?) have been perfect. Several characters not in the bible were in this and others were left out. That was disappointing. They focused heavily on this "Reuben" character set out to kill Paul. And his Christian wife named "Dinah" these two aren't even in the bible. I was wondering what happened to John as he vanished not too long into the film? It really wasn't necessary to show a woman's bare breasts to depict a sex scene. Disgusting having this in a biblical film Christians are going to see!! Some parts were nice. I liked Peter a whole lot. He had this gentleman stubbornness and seemed so like PETER to me. I think the Damascus road scene was OK but he went blind, he didn't see people in a photoshop filter. I liked the journey scenes and most of the scenes after Paul received his sight. I gave it a 6 as it could've been worse but I did like it to an extent.

I know this movie has a strong fictional basis, however, I have so enjoyed the movie and have watched it many, many times since I purchased it over 2 years ago. I thought the director Roger Young did a beautiful job and I loved the guy who played King Herod, it was truly an excellent cast, especially the actors who played Peter and Paul. I didn't give it a 10 because it wasn't as Biblically based as it should have been. Again, I have watched this movie many times and would recommend it to anyone, it is done so beautifully!!! Even though there are fictional characters that take up a considerable amount of the movie, the basis of this movie is very grounded in the The New Testament, again this is one of my favorite movies!!!

Many writers of the modern Biblical movies take many liberties. In this one it portrayed the Apostles as as very flawed, angry, jealous but the women as pillars of compassion and common sense. In this one I simply became tired of Dinah's role--especially when the Bible does not portray this. Yes I know that incidences have to be written in for drama or effect but I'm not comfortable with attempts to be politically correct by changing the "character" of the characters. I recall a movie of Jesus which had his mother Mary instructing Jesus to be baptized by John the Baptist. I'm sorry but leave PC for the sitcoms and R rated movies.