Centering on the activities of a charismatic 'Messiah' like character who emerges and leads people into the Syrian dessert having first apparently saved them from massacre by calling up a sandstorm to drive away threatening forces, I found the story tight and excellently paced. Moving between the Middle East and the US we are treated to a gripping and adult tale of how a modern day reincarnation of the Christ figure might be treated - and simultaneously kept guessing ourselves as to whether this is indeed 'the real deal' or simply very clever hoax, a charlatan preying on the needs of people both in the war-torn regions of his emergence and then in the moral vacuum of middle America where he surfaces having escaped capture in Israel where he is briefly detained.
The chief criticism of the story seemed to be that it was slow paced - well yes, perhaps, if you are of the type who cannot stomach your entertainment unless it capers along at the pace of Fast and Furious on steroids, but for anyone above the age of twelve who can appreciate a story built level by level into something quite special and complex, this is the real deal. It's an unusually gripping and tightly told tale that holds your attention from first to last until it's final revelation of........
Well you'll just have to watch it to find that out for yourself won't you!
(I'm not going to go through all the actors and directors etc because I've never heard of them - but suffice to say that the Jesus figure is played with a suitably enigmatic quality and almost model like attractiveness by Mehdi Dehbi who, is not required to do much in the way of acting beyond the one inscrutable face he presents to the world, but does this extremely well.)
