Personally I know of two people who've decided they want to learn more about the Jesus they didn't know of before seeing this movie. There's something else that's been quite interesting to learn. I have two very well-educated friends, one a Ph.D and one with a Masters, who believed it was a scientifically documented fact that Jesus wasn't an historical figure. I had no idea this belief was so entrenched in our culture until my friends saw this movie. From our subsequent discussions, they have absolutely no idea where they learned their belief that even the mere existance of Jesus has been proven to be fiction. Now they want to know why. It's an important question, I think.
Yes and no. The author is implying that it's Gibson's fault in a way that the movie is exclusionary. He says, "To understand "The Passion," though, you need at least familiarity with the four Gospels and, ideally, faith in them. The movie does not concern itself with back story; it assumes that you come to it with a certain body of knowledge." Yes, Gibson could have included more of a back story, but then his movie would have been a lot longer. The increasing secularization of American culture has contributed to this lack of knowledge, so it's not Gibson's fault here.
My original point was more of a general one about how Hollywood excludes half the voting population from its movies, and they never get called on it. I can name exactly one sympathetic character in recent years who was a Republican -- Ralph Fiennes' character in "Made in Manhattan." And even then, he was more of a RINO anyway.