Rating: ✝️🔫

For my money, the greatest thing about movies is that they can be about whatever you want. It’s why I gravitate towards bananas trash like Underworld, or cackle like a loon when I discover movies along the lines of Freaked or Blood Diner. It’s these movies, which flaunt a total disregard for traditional taste or “formal” rules of how a film should be made, that truly tickle my fancy and deliver the good brain chemicals which make life worth living.

Such deranged entries into the cinematic canon come from a variety of sources. Some are the result of massive Hollywood misfires (Cats, a movie I have now seen fully seven times), but many are the celluloid equivalent of one weirdo standing on a roof and yelling into a megaphone. Whether grasping at the American Dream (Tommy Wiseau; The Room), flushing studio support down the toilet (Tom Green; Freddy Got Fingered), or really loving their wife (Paul W.S. Anderson; Resident Evil franchise), many of these auteurs have Something Big To Say with their bizarre little movies. For example, what if someone wrote and directed a mind-melting, truly wackadoo feature about how cool it is to love Jesus?

Though many films exist which fit that description, I’m here this Christmas to discuss Assassin 33 A.D., a towering monolith in the landscape of head-scratching religious entertainment. Had I known of the movie's January release before deigning Artemis Fowl “the worst film since Cats,” I would’ve sung a different tune. With Assassin 33 A.D., writer-director Jim Carroll delivers an experience unhinged beyond the normal weirdo parameters of schlock Jesus-freak filmmaking; a cloyingly earnest and stunningly violent movie which posits the best way to express love of Christ is a film where a time-traveling private militia jaunts back to biblical Jerusalem, then headshots the Lamb with 9mm handguns.

Yes, the title delivers: JC himself gets murked before Assassin 33 A.D. is even halfway through. Forget about your Charlie Brown Christmas or Wonderful Life this year; the best way to remember the reason for the season is watching Extremely Caucasian Jesus held at gunpoint by a weeping dude in full tactical gear, who sobs out, I shit you not, “If you’re really the son of God…...you can stop these bullets!” before popping a doubleshot directly through the Messiah’s dome. It’s a moment which has positively haunted me for the three months since I first watched the film, but even this eponymous killing barely squeaks by into a list of Assassin’s wildest elements.

I’m getting ahead of myself, of course, so let’s roll it back and hit the basics. Assassin 33 A.D. is, ostensibly, a film about forgiveness and finding or rediscovering your faith. We open on a Bradley Cooper American Sniper-type named Brandt, driving his ghoulish Instagram-ready mayofamily down good ol’ Opening Title Credits Road. Brandt’s a hero for killing a lot of brown people overseas, but he's really happy to be back in America, cruising the long road to nowhere in his brand new Honda SUV. They all have a family moment, his wife tears up because she thinks God has a plan for Brandt, and then a tanker truck smashes into their car and immediately slaughters Mrs. Brandt plus Girl Child 1 and Girl Child 2. Their deaths are instantaneous, hilarious, and the first three notches in a filmic body count which easily hits mid double digits.

Inevitably, Brandt gets mad at God for smearing his family across the asphalt like grape jelly and turns his back on Christianity. We pick up with a nerd genius named Ram and a nerd genius named Amy; she's Christian, he isn't. They have a very chaste date where he tries on a new polo shirt, and suddenly they're in a group with two other nerd geniuses working on a matter transfer machine. Their employer is a George Lopez motherfucker playing a Middle Eastern stereotype named Ahmed, and his head of security, of course, is Brandt. Shit happens, blah blah blah, it turns out the matter machine can time travel, and Ahmed tells Brandt to go back and kill Jesus so Islam will be the only religion on Earth. You know, just some extremely normal, extremely non-racist shit. Being heroes, the nerd geniuses decide to stop Ahmed with an incomprehensible time-travel plan.

Assassin 33 A.D. goes from there, and I do mean goes. While the first 40 minutes clunk around to tee up the film’s bugfuck premise, Assassin’s back 70 is a chunk of truly deranged cinema that could only be made by someone with inspired, inscrutable vision. The whole thing is nutty (early on, Ram and Amy hack an iPad to find Ahmed FaceTiming a terrorist leader), but writer-director Jim Carroll’s interpretation of Christ’s story as a Timecop situation stands out as giddy, glee-inducing absurdity. It's the sort of movie which feels satirical; a fake endeavor so off-the-wall and unbelievable that you assume it's meant as commentary on ill-advised religious media. After all, how seriously am I meant to take American Idol B-lister/white dreads offender Jason Castro as Jesus?

Very seriously, apparently. On his website, Carroll crowns Castro “the BEST Jesus EVER.” High praise for a man who delivers all his lines in a sedated warble and looks perpetually stoned behind the copious amounts of smoky eye makeup. One of Assassin’s best moments comes when nerd genius Simon zaps into the middle of Christ’s agony at Gethsemane, only for Jesus to look up at him with the sort of cry-eyes mascara streaks usually reserved for horny goth photoshoots. I don’t know if presenting Jesus as a My Chemical Romance fan counts as sacrilege, but I have to assume PMC goons gunning down the apostles certainly charts.

That’s the thing about Assassin 33 A.D. For all the film’s Christian proselytizing, Carroll seems to have forgotten the Ten Commandments; namely, “thou shalt not kill.” Speaking conservatively, Assassin is a slaughterhouse. Brandt’s family, Brandt himself, all four nerd geniuses, Ahmed, all his subordinates, Ram’s parents, the apostles, Roman soldiers, Jesus Christ, and many, many others keel over at the drop of a hat; often repeatedly thanks to time travel shenanigans. The sheer amount of executions executed within Assassin achieve a number akin to a Takashi Miike film, though Miike characters are capable of more regret. Is goody-goody Ram naturally inclined to kill, or is he hardened from years and years of gunning down victims at point-blank range?

I think The Chronicles of Narnia would’ve been a better film if the White Witch made Edmund ventilate Aslan with a Luger. The King of Kings taking two to the skull is certainly Assassin 33 A.D’s standout moment, but there’s so, so much more to absorb from this film. The PMC guys surround the apostle’s camp and scope them out with night vision - “target verified.” Ram and Amy’s “first date” is a stilted nightmare scenario of politeness and sickly sweet teen infatuation - are white Christians just like that? Characters yell shit like “don’t let them kill Jesus!,” the Messiah quotes The Terminator, there’s a bible app called iDisciple, and Ahmed perishes in a landscape of decimated buildings and noxious gas once the Shepherd is dispatched. This is “a world without forgiveness” - the end result of his “ultimate Jihad.”

Assassin 33 A.D.’s xenophobia is staggering, displaying an untamed anti-Muslim sentiment which would’ve done numbers in the Bush years. It’s cartoonish and absurd, but it still fucking sucks. I suppose it’s to be expected - after all, this is a film where the guy who’s been putting holes in terrorists says he’s “not a killer” and actually means it. I have to assume teens who watch this movie will either turn into their parents or grow up and never speak to them again. A misplaced sense of superiority? That particular Christian breed of self-aggrandizing self-pity? The belief that fish-shaped bumper stickers are the only thing holding back our world from chaos? You know this movie’s got ‘em, baby.

Maybe that’s part of the charm. For all it has to say, the moral compass of Assassin 33 A.D. is about as complex as a G.I. Joe episode. The film is so utterly alien in construction and delivery that I can’t imagine anyone could take it seriously, which leads me to ask…...who is this meant for? Certainly Assassin’s violence would dissaude more conservative parents, but the movie has zero legitimate entertainment value outside the most dedicated circles of faith. Even then, the film depicts Christ’s profound suffering with all the sensitivity of a Night at the Museum re-enactment; they might as well have cast Owen Wilson. Is the bar that low? Are these people so thirsty for God Content that Assassin tracks as Donnie Darko for suburban Jesus freaks? I don’t know, man. It’s one hell of a movie.

By the time Assassin 33 A.D. ends, you’ve seen the Savior die twice, learned the hilarious truth of who was crucified alongside him, experienced a time travel plot so boneheaded you yearn for Bill & Ted, and hopefully, renewed your faith in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. I didn’t, but I certainly laughed my ass off when Jesus blows open his tomb like he’s performing a Dragon Ball Z attack. If you’ve read this far, you’ll know whether Assassin holds any value for you, but I’m willing to pencil it in as the wildest film of 2020. If I knew Christianity let you make movies this off-the-rails, I never would’ve stopped going to church.

(P.S. - There’s a great mid-credits scene as well. I won’t spoil it, but I’ll admit that I’m praying for a sequel.)

This Christmas, Celebrate Jesus With ASSASSIN 33 A.D.