Hero: The Rock Opera is a weird beast, even in the world of Christian multi-media. It’s a sung-through rock/hip-hop musical that retells, if we’re being generous, the story of Jesus Christ, set in a modern-day inner city New York. Although, it’s actually an alternate universe since, you know, Christianity has never existed in this world and so it’s obviously a dystopian state under a fascist one-world government. I told you it was weird. This is also just a recorded version of the stage production, not a “movie” movie, if you know what I mean. I mean, that’s fine, but it adds to the weird vibe. Michael Tait, formerly of dc talk and currently, if I’ve been keeping up, which I haven’t, of The Newsboys, stars as Hero, the Jesus figure of the story and I’ll give the production props for casting a Jesus of color. I will also say that it this entire thing is not, surprisingly, aggressively stupid. It doesn’t work most of the time, but it’s not offensive to me as a Christian or as a fan of musicals. The worst element by far is Michael Quinlan as the Judas figure (creatively named “Jude” here); he gives a truly terrible performance. There are a couple of good songs here. Rebecca St. James is on hand as the Mary Magdalene of the story and she gives a great performance of a Latin-tinged Madonna-esque dance number called Secrets of the Heart. Raised in Harlem features a blistering guest performance by a rapper named T-Bone who genuinely spits some fire as part of a fist-pumping anthem. And Not In Our House is an aggressive punk number that finds Jesus and the High Priest clashing over what goes on in the Temple; I liked the way it dramatically explicated the moral outrage on both sides, Hero outraged over the commercialization of faith and the Priests outraged by Hero’s false doctrine.
For all its flaws, I still found myself kind of shocked near the end by the image of the “crucified” Hero; his dead body has been hoisted up and tied onto a street sign in an image that feels incredibly powerful in the obvious resonances to lynching that it evokes. So, there are moments of boldness here, adding the name of Christ to the list of black bodies murdered by a racist American society. But those moments are painfully few and far between, buried under a lot of mediocrity. I kind of get what they were going for, but they didn’t get it. And at nearly two-and-a-half hours, it’s far, far too long. And just for the record, it whiffs in its depiction of Christ, making him a painfully bland figure who fails to explicate any of the most radical and powerful teachings in the Bible or invest him with even the slightest charisma. This is a weird artifact and I’m not exactly sorry I watched it, just for that reason. But neither Christians or non-Christians are going to find much here to hold their interest beyond the novelty factor. Kudos for trying something different, I guess. I guess. 2 stars.
tl;dr – weird rock opera reimagines life of Christ in an inner-city setting; there are a few moments that work, but it’s mostly very mediocre and over-long. 2 stars.