Metacritic gives The Passion of the Christ a fairly favorable once-over, starting with Roger Ebert’s insistent (if properly tempered) applause for the film’s accomplishment. I, however, far prefer the pull quotes on Rotten Tomatoes.

—”The Passion of the Christ is so relentlessly focused on the savagery of Jesus’ final hours that this film seems to arise less from love than from wrath, and to succeed more in assaulting the spirit than in uplifting it.”

—”It’s as if Gibson is measuring God’s love by the amount of blood he shows on the screen.”

Even Ebert notes that the film deserves an NC-17 for violence and the MPAA wimped out.

Of course, as with any movie, the book is much better.