Apostle Peter and the Last Supper Blu-ray Review
Questioning faith.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, April 16, 2012
Hundreds of millions of Christians worldwide recently celebrated Easter, and many of them spent Holy Week recounting
the events that led up to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. In events and holy days like Maundy Thursday and
Good Friday, Jesus' last remaining hours on this Earth are revisited and (hopefully, anyway) made relevant for
contemporary worshipers. Usually playing out in some of these observances are remembrances of some of Jesus'
interactions with his disciples, notably in and around the Last Supper. What's so interesting about many of these
observances is how they tend to focus on Judas' betrayal of Jesus, while at the same time they can often gloss over
another betrayal: that of Simon Peter, who denied Christ three times after Jesus had been arrested and was facing
execution. Many devout Christians tend to dismiss Peter's actions as relatively minor, born out of fear and ultimately
redeemed and forgiven. But others may rightfully question whether Peter's actions were more akin to Judas' than many
would want to consider. After all, wasn't it really just a matter of degree? Yes, Judas' actions actually led to Jesus'
arrest and crucifixion, but Peter's actions did nothing to
save Jesus, and in fact some would argue that Peter's
actions were all about saving
Peter. This is all highly speculative, of course, and it points out the fact that even
believers have precious little information about
any of the disciples, their lives and what, beyond their belief in
Jesus as the Messiah, motivated them. We get one or two line descriptions of some of the apostles in the Gospels and
other books of the New Testament, and a few ancillary historical documents along the way, but, as with Jesus himself,
much is left to the individual imaginations of readers to fill in the blanks. The 2012 film
Apostle Peter and The Last
Supper attempts to do some of that blank filling, providing a nice late career role for the always reliable Robert
Loggia, who here portrays the elderly Peter, arrested and jailed by Nero, who is awaiting his own crucifixion and looks
back on his time with Jesus at the urging of a Roman centurion. While the film is hampered by what must have been a
small budget, keeping it from ever achieving anything approaching an epic sweep, it's a heartfelt, intimate look at one
of the core group of believers who surrounded Jesus and were the first witnesses to the Christian faith.
Like many films aimed at a Christian audience,
Apostle Peter and the Last Supper assumes the viewer is already
more or less clued into the basic storyline and more or less ready to be involved in a dramatic recreation of what has
heretofore been left largely to their imaginations. In the case of this film, we get an elderly Peter (Loggia) brought into
his
prison cell, where a curious Roman guard named Martinian (Laurence Fuller) begins questioning him about his
background
and faith. Martinian's questioning only becomes more acute when his wife, tipping toward the Christian side of things
anyway, shows up at the jail and importunes her husband to get more information about Jesus' last days. Martinian's
efforts are hampered by the boorish behavior of his fellow guard, Processus (David Kallaway), a kind of "dumb jock"
type
who also just
might be interested in this newfangled religion that Peter is talking about.
Apostle Peter and the Last Supper certainly won't surprise any believers, or in fact any non-believers, as it
treads a decidedly predictable tale of testimony and redemption. But the film is surprisingly affecting, even if it
sometimes stumbles upon (ahem) The Way. Some of the Biblical elements here are transposed from their original
settings, which may lead some orthodox types to be frustrated, and there's also a kind of colloquial aspect to the film
that posits Jesus as kind of a "surfer dude" redeemer and the apostles as dunderheaded fools who argue amongst
themselves as to which one of them is Jesus' favorite. (At least the dunderheaded apostle bits are somewhat accurate,
as any reader of the Gospels knows. The disciples were not exactly models of insightful understanding on either
mundane or metaphysical levels.)
The film is rather small scale, probably necessitated by a miniscule budget, which means there's some undeniably fake
looking CGI and a production which basically spans just a handful of sets, most of them minimally dressed. But the
writing here (by the film's director Gabriel Sabloff in conjunction with Timothy Ratajczak) does a good job in delineating
the various characters, and in providing a largely believable arc for Martinian, who bears the bulk of the film's dramatic
scope. (The writers
do seem to want their little piece of
The Passion of the Christ, as they introduce a
Satanic minion who taunts Peter in his jail cell.) Loggia provides the needed
gravitas that keeps
Apostle
Peter and the Last Supper from feeling
like a
700 Club Movie of the Week, and the rest of the supporting cast does good work, albeit work that is
consistently contemporary in tone, far removed from the sort of distant
ethos of Biblical epics from the fifties and
sixties.
Apostle Peter and the Last Supper does manage to impart some valuable moments about forgiveness and
redemption, while also making the plight of Peter's journey with his own faith something that modern day believers can
relate to and empathize with. Despite a less than "cast of thousands" budget,
Apostle Peter and the Last
Supper manages to deliver a heartfelt message that should be appreciated by Christians in and out of the Easter
season.
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