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The latest entry in Christian cinema comes by way of Mauro Borrelli’s “The Last Supper,” which left audiences hungry after its recent theatrical release.
The film tells the story of the titular event and those directly surrounding it from the unique perspectives of Jesus’s followers — an approach previously untouched on the silver screen — centering predominantly on Simon Peter and Judas Iscariot.
The movie is a low-budget project which garnered the bulk of its publicity on account of its executive producer, well-known contemporary Christian music artist Chris Tomlin. Those who enter expecting production quality similar to that of the ongoing immensely popular Jesus bioseries “The Chosen” will be disappointed. Those who expect a production quality befitting Tomlin’s works of art will actually be pleasantly surprised.
That is to say, “The Last Supper” is on the whole an unremarkable film. The perspective is compelling, but the execution over nearly two hours of run time is thoroughly subpar.
In attempting to portray more relatable and sympathetic disciples, Borrelli produces an extremely slow and underwhelming account of Jesus’s final meal. Watching the movie, viewers will get the sense that Borrelli wasn’t entirely certain about the story he wanted to tell — and worse yet, that the cast was equally confused.
In the first place, nobody can quite make up their minds as to whether they want their English to bear a region-appropriate accent. While the main characters speak plain, American-sounding English, most of the side characters slip into Middle East-adjacent accents like those used on “The Chosen.”
James Oliver Wheatley delivers an, on the whole, poor performance as Simon Peter, coming off as either confused or wooden — a terrible problem to have with a central character. Worse yet, Jamie Ward sporadically alternates between Jim Caviezel’s stoic and unflappable Jesus as seen in the 2004 hit movie “The Passion of the Christ” and Jonathan Roumie’s emotional Jesus from “The Chosen.” He does neither particularly well.
The best performance by far comes from Robert Knepper as Judas Iscariot — and that’s where moviegoers will see flashes of what this movie could have been. Borrelli’s writing creates a Judas with whom Christian viewers can empathize: one plagued by worries, bitterness, and temptation.
Knepper brings this Judas to life, showing a man racked with discontent and guilt in the lead up and aftermath of his betrayal. If Borrelli’s Peter received the same quality writing and acting, Christians would see their own doubts and shortcomings equally represented in the redeemed Peter and the condemned Judas, as it is, the betrayer remains the more relatable — the unfortunate cost of a stellar performance.
And Knepper’s Judas is only the beginning of the bright spots which might tragically but pleasantly surprise skeptical audiences. The locations and sets are at once captivating and entirely believable, with the exception of the opening and closing landscape shots, which look like they may have been generated by artificial intelligence.
The scenes which actually take place at the Passover table are beautifully done, but, for a movie entitled “The Last Supper,” they are regrettably short. Because the story culminates with Peter’s rooster and Judas’s noose, the arrest and execution of Jesus avoids gory violence like in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” but at the cost of temporal inaccuracies and showing a mere five seconds of the cross.
While “The Last Supper” is an all-around unsatisfactory film, it’s at the very least not a complete disappointment based on what it was given. It provides audiences of all ages a fresh and interesting new perspective on the passion narrative and allows Christians to see themselves in the sins and failures which brought it about.
It’s not a terrible use of two hours — though when the closing credits roll and Chris Tomlin’s “No Greater Love” begins, most viewers will want at least half an hour back.
