The Last Supper

Rated PG-13 • Theaters

It’s a thin line between love and Hades—or so providence might appear. Why did God love Jacob but hate Esau? Or why did Jesus pray that Peter’s faith would not fail but said of Judas Iscariot it would’ve been better if he had not been born?

The Last Supper (not to be confused with The Chosen: Last Supper also arriving in theaters this spring) is a new film depicting the 24 hours before the crucifixion that explores the differences between Peter and Judas. The film depicts these two disciples as maybe not so different.

A favorable interpretation of the film’s message would be that we’re all—from the well-meaning Peters to the troubled Judases—equally lost without Christ.

The Last Supper begins with a scene of Jesus (Jamie Ward) healing a deaf-mute boy and multiplying bread and fish. It then jumps forward to his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Peter (James Oliver Wheatley) expresses concern for his master’s safety and vows to face death if necessary. Peter’s vigorous exclamations of faithfulness to Jesus foreshadow his vehement denials, which are only two rooster crows away.

In one of the film’s odd embellishments, Peter and John (Charlie MacGechan) fuss at some length over upper room security measures, including procuring an escape ladder.

Peter’s story bookends the film (with Wheatley getting top billing in the closing credits), which begins with his voiceover and ends with his preaching to a crowd. But Judas (a superb Robert Knepper) steals the show.

The betrayer gets a rather sympathetic treatment: He reacts with joy at Jesus’ miracles, initially refuses to sell Jesus out, and stands up to the envious Caiaphas (James Faulkner), denying that Jesus’ works are “mere fabrications.”

Judas battles against his greed and dissatisfaction with Jesus’ apolitical intentions. But Satan, who appears both as a serpent and in a grotesque human form (Ahmed Hammoud), continues to hiss at Judas from the shadows, and the disciple eventually betrays Jesus.

While The Last Supper has an excellent cast and authentic sets and costumes, it spends a lot of energy imagining how close Peter could have come to meeting Judas’ doom.

When Peter finds Judas hanging from a noose in another of the film’s extrabiblical excursions, Satan assails him too. “Join your brother. It’s your only redemption, Peter,” a crouching Satan goads from atop a wall. Peter picks up a rope to hang himself but walks away when he recalls Christ’s instruction to “strengthen your brothers.”

In reality, no thin line lies between salvation and perdition—since God “chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4). This neglect of God’s big plan might bother some Christian viewers. Others might object to visual depictions of God the Son (shown with hair much longer than any other male character’s) along with the film’s invented scenes that add to the Biblical record.

The film takes a respectful approach to Jesus, whose facial expressions bear the anxiety of the nearing dark hour. We see a compelling moment when he washes the feet of his disciples, including an astonished Judas. But the film shows little of the crucifixion and none of the empty tomb, jumping to Galilee’s seashore a week after the resurrection, where the Eleven act as if they’re seeing the risen Lord for the very first time.