Alex Joffe on Mel Gibson's Maccabee movie

ALEX JOFFE: MEL AND THE MACCABEE (Jewish Ideas Daily). Excerpt:

But in some respects, few people are better equipped than Gibson to tackle the character of Judah Maccabee and the Jewish revolt against the Syrian Greeks, which took place from 167 to 160 B.C.E. In his 1979 breakthrough movie Mad Max, Gibson fought his way across the post-apocalyptic Australian outback. In the Lethal Weapon series, Martin Riggs, the Los Angeles detective played by Gibson was chronically on the edge of a breakdown. In the more recent Edge of Darkness, Gibson's homicide cop pursued his daughter's killer. Gibson's most iconic characters have been damaged loners who are roused by adversity to lead against-the-odds battles against injustice.

Gibson also has a long cinematic history with freedom fighters. In the 1995 Braveheart, of which he was director and star, he played the doomed 13th-century Scots leader William Wallace, driven by an outrage committed against his beloved into warring against the English. In The Patriot in 2000, he portrayed a South Carolina farmer drawn into the Revolutionary War after his son was brutally killed by the British. When it comes to reluctant heroes who "just snapped," no one does it better than Gibson.

Moreover, the biblical epic as a cinematic form in America is in grave need of a reboot.

Background here.