52
Metascore
11 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 75Washington PostAnn HornadayWashington PostAnn HornadayClearly well timed with Lenten reflections on sacrifice, service, suffering and responsibility. But it offers an equally relevant — and inspiring — portrayal of principled steadfastness and spiritual integrity in the face of a petty, corrupt and tyrannical leader.
- 75Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperChicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperIt’s an impressively staged, well-acted, thoughtful and faithful telling of the last days of the Apostle Paul — and how Luke risked his life again and again to visit his great mentor in prison and make a written record of Paul’s life experiences and teachings.
- 60Village VoiceBilge EbiriVillage VoiceBilge EbiriThere’s little in Paul, Apostle of Christ that’s not predictable, but the film engages honestly enough with its ideas that at times it feels like a small…well, let’s not use the word miracle in this case. It doesn’t shy away from complexity, and for that we can all be grateful — believers and heathens alike.
- 50Movie NationRoger MooreMovie NationRoger MooreHyatt isn’t very good at getting across the urgency of the story, and for all the suggestions of torture (“Another 20 lashes!”) and scenes of prisoners being burned, the picture lacks drama or the tension that an account — based on the New Testament’s “Acts” and Christian tradition — might have had.
- 50The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloThe A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloAs movies expressly courting the faith-based audience go, Paul, Apostle Of Christ acquits itself reasonably well from moment to moment, avoiding the howlers that plague such Pure Flix titles as "Samson" and "God’s Not Dead."
- 50The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyThe Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyWe have a monotonous conjectural melodrama for the faith-based crowd that does nothing to reach out to others. It does indicate how a very important seed was planted for the blossoming of Christianity, but is banal where it needed to be charged with passion and a palpable religious compulsion of its own.
- 50VarietyPeter DebrugeVarietyPeter DebrugeCountering the CG bombast and apocalyptic doom and gloom of the modern blockbuster with a soft-spoken message of faith and love, Paul, Apostle of Christ struggles to find a compelling entry point to a critical period in the early Christian church.
- 50Slant MagazineEd GonzalezSlant MagazineEd GonzalezThe film's simple, redundant, but valuable moral lesson to its audience finds comfortable enough expression in an aesthetic that's banal but impressively consistent.
- 40TheWrapInkoo KangTheWrapInkoo KangUltimately, the overstuffed, under-dramatized film fails to fully develop the stakes at hand, but it features more thoughtful world-building than most faith-based films, as well as a bracing honesty about the difficulty of reconciling idealistic credos with a harsh and unforgiving world.
- 30Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleLos Angeles TimesRobert AbeleA few minutes of thriller-like tension early on gives way to a lot of tediously scripted scenes of whisper-acting that rarely breathe life and humanity into what should be a potent turning point story in a religion's history.