What if The Life of Brian was recreated, but the tone veered from Friday shtick to Sunday school awe? Not even on Good Friday, either. The Harder They Fall, Jeymes Samuel’s gorgeous debut, has a glossy look, and the Western version of the film features an equally impressive cast of big-name performers. Unfortunately, it never finds its own point and instead becomes lost in a crazy attempt to constantly make references to better sword-and-sandal movies.
LaKeith Stanfield’s Clarence and Teyana Taylor’s Mary Magdalene engage in a chariot racing reminiscent of Fast & Furious, which immediately gives off an aura of artificiality. This isn’t Ben-Hur at all—just two naive fools riding about in the streets of Jerusalem. Later on, there’s a scene when people are smoking pot and breathing in and physically floating into the air; it’s a magical realist flourish, but Samuel never quite lands on it.
Experiencing greater debt than before, Clarence chooses to participate in the religious movement through his brother, the follower Thomas (who is also Stanfield). After a sub-Ridley Scott altercation, he picks up Omar Sy, a gladiator, and they become friends despite his early catastrophic efforts.
This sermon on the mount is ultimately addressed to no one because it is attempting to shout ten things at once.
The tone fluctuates between broad efforts at humor, political sermonizing, attempted earnestness, and back again as Clarence muses on declaring himself to be a messiah. Those are quite strange politics; while audience members who are devout may nod in agreement at the Biblical riffs, regular churchgoers will be horrified. It’s strange to see no acknowledgment that this cast is neither Middle Eastern or North African, either, or to see groups of “gypsies” presented as violent troublemakers in a movie that vehemently (and properly) condemns the whitewashing of Biblical epics.
James McAvoy’s portrayal of Pontius Pilate is a pantomime villain that drives home the metaphor of the Roman Empire as the triumph of white supremacy. The impression that this sermon on the mount is trying to shout ten things at once and ultimately speaking to no one is only strengthened by a last-act veer into sincerity.