Sign of the Cross Review

I thought the movie was good, though not fantastic or anything. I personally found the character of Marcus Superbus stale.  He would act very one-dimensional, always focused on love or duty.  I did enjoy the characters or Nero and Poppaea.  I would have liked to see more of them, and more of the conflict between Poppaea and Tigellinus.  Nero only spoke in three or four scenes, and his character, with his revelry and other people influencing him back and forth, usually brought out the best parts of the movie.  I grant that there were no extremely apparent plot holes in the movie.  The first half of the movie, with its Christians going back and forth about their dogma, is rather slow.  The final part, at the coliseum, is quite a spectacle.  With midget fights and all kinds of cool animals and nudity the movie pulls you into to a lot of fun.  My biggest complaint with the movie is that it stokes the Christian persecution complex, but I suppose that’s more a product of its time and creators.  The movie was not explicitly preachy, I suppose.  Overall, the movie tells an exquisite story of the choice between love and faith (to a god or an emperor) and resisting temptations.  7/10