To quote Mr O'Reilly: "this is not a religious book. We do not address Jesus as the Messiah, only as a man who galvanized a remote area of the Roman Empire and made very powerful enemies while preaching a philosophy of peace and love." The book is the historical and secular version of the life of Jesus. I found the movie to be refreshing and interesting. The problem was of casting. Joe Doyle stood out as Judas. The rest of the apostles look to be Hebrews of the area. The movie assumes the viewer is familiar with events prior to Jesus's birth and his early life. This is a disservice to those who are not. Smoother transitions in time could have been done better. Over all it is a good movie and the young actor playing Jesus gives a solid performance.

Along with the criticisms others have added, I wish to add my complaints about the way this film mostly ignored the high points in the life of Jesus.

The story of him comforting the lady with leprosy was presented in such a way as to appear that nothing happened to her other than that Jesus was nice to her.

Almost all the other stories considered miraculous were omitted. When we got to the Last Supper--the key part of the scene was omitted.

I couldn't help but compare this to the 11 p.m. sports reader presenting us highlights of, let's say, a Tiger 6-5 win over the Yankees. He shows 2 minutes of clips of the game, 18 plays in all: 6 pitches that were simply called "Ball Two" by the umpire, 4 pop-up outs, 3 ground-outs, 3 fly outs, one single, and one run scoring on a wild pitch. Fans would be screaming, "Where are the highlights?" The crucifixion scene presented Jesus on the right side of the trio, instead of in the middle. Didn't matter, I guess, since in this film there was no exchange of words with the other two victims.

It was almost strange at the beginning, when we saw a new-born baby, but he seemed to just be in a room--not a stable/manger of any kind, and there was nothing else about the going's on in Bethlehem.

Jesus was depicted as having no idea who he really was, at least, for almost all of his life. Since the Bible makes it clear that his earthly parents knew from the get-go, I think it would be hard to figure they never told him what they knew--if indeed he didn't already know.

The oddest thing was that, at times, Jesus and a couple of the others seemed to be speaking with a Scottish accent. Now this wasn't true throughout the film, which only makes it more bizarre.

I liked many of the settings and costumes and there were some good scenes, but if you're going to present, under any title, a film depicting someone's life...

...for the love of...you know...include the scenes that almost anyone would say were the high points of the man's life!

Killing Jesus was created in the Spirit of Bill O'Rielly's book. Killing Jesus is about the historical social forces of Jesus' time. Passover with the money lenders, the Roman Ocupation and the politics of money and power. Jesus' teaching were a threat to the social forces of Jesus' time. (and a threat to many in modern times) Bill's movie omits many of the miracles etc for the message is about the times, and lets the viewer decide his or her opinion on the Son of God question. Regretablly, the Makers of Killing Jesus had to edit for time considerations many important parts which were in the book. I believe we would have a double reel movie (an old saying when movie makers used film) to add all the material. Regrettably, all biblical movies leave room for interpretation, and make controversial liberties of what historical individuals were thinking. Did Judas keep some of the money because Judas wanted a horse is more of trying to figure out Judas' motives? A hidden message of how heinous Judas was. What Killing Jesus mastered is the portrayal of Jesus' message about forgiveness, God is love, and Jesus is willing to stand up and sacrifice himself for us. The symbolic message with the fish at the ending states Killing Jesus' thesis. The message is about Jesus' movement and the crucifixion tried to stop the movement, but only resulted in the movement becoming stronger. As with the fish miracle, you decide if Jesus is the Son of God. An attempt at a historical portrayal of which hits the mark. Seven or eight out of ten stars.