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What Gibson gives us in his "The Passion of the Christ" is the most prolonged human torture ever seen on the screen.
Violent, no doubt about it. More violent than turning on HBO, hardly.
It is without reason, and by no means necessarily derivative from the grand hypothesis that, after all, the crucifixion was without reason, as Pontius Pilate kept on observing.
It is not without reason at all. It is Gibsons vision of what was and a dramatic tool for impressing on the audience the depth of the gift given to us by the Lord.
One sees for dozens of minutes soldiers apparently determined to flog to death the man the irresolute procurator had consented merely to "chastise."
Buckley here has lost his mind. The Romans were not simple "chastisers", they were violent and cruel men. "Chastisers" do not nail innocent men to crosses to suffer and then suffocate. Both Buckley and you should know better than this.
See the film, make up your own mind.