Imagine a movie that feels like equal parts The Chosen, Gladiator and Rocky, and you’ll have The Carpenter.
Oren comes to Galilee from the north. In fact, he’s known as the Northlander, and he’s a fierce opponent to face in Cana’s bloodthirsty fighting pits. His red hair and pale complexion mark him as an outsider. He arrived in the province of Palestine as a young boy, a prisoner of war among the Romans. A kind Jewish man and his wife adopted Oren as well as his brother, Levi, who hailed from a different lineage.
When Oren’s father falls from a roof and quickly succumbs to his injuries, he leaves his son with a final message: “My son, there is a plan for each of us. You need to find yours. Find peace in Nazareth.”
Oren sets out to make good on his father’s final words, moving in with his Uncle Sharar in Nazareth. Sharar manages the fight club outside of town. And it doesn’t take long for the older man to sense Oren’s potential as a fighter in the ring.
But something unexpected happens: Oren meets Yeshua, a man unlike any he’s ever known. The mysterious carpenter cares for the poor, gives bread to the needy and works wood with a master’s eye for precision and perfection. Yeshua invites Oren to become his apprentice—when he’s not fighting, of course.
As Oren begins preparation for a regional match that will qualify him for a prestigious tournament in Jerusalem, he meets a young woman named Mira. And even though he feels he was born to fight, Oren slowly begins to realize that perhaps God’s plan for his life is bigger than pummeling strangers into unconsciousness.
Much of what’s positive in this story will be addressed in the spiritual lessons and worldview that Yeshua seeks to impart. That said, even apart from the carpenter’s influence, Oren is a man of character and ambition. He trains hard (as we see over and over in multiple training montages) to become the strongest, most capable fighter he can be.
Oren and his brother, Levi, have their moments of conflict. But they’re fiercely loyal to each other. Likewise, even though Uncle Sharar initially seems as if he might be a somewhat shady character, he proves to be a loyal ally and advocate for Oren. Also in Oren’s corner—quite literally—is a doctor named Amos, who eventually becomes another key teammate of sorts for Oren in his fighting pursuits.
As mentioned, Oren meets Mira, a young woman with a daughter named Abigail. Mira is a widow, and it doesn’t take Oren long to take a liking to her—and vice versa. Like Oren’s other new friends in Nazareth, Mira is deeply loyal to Oren and believes in him even when he doesn’t believe in himself. In fact, Yeshua says that having someone like that is one of the great benefits of a good marriage. The carpenter helps to mentor Oren in his courtship of Mira.
Scripture is silent on details about Jesus’ life between the ages of 12 and the beginning of his public ministry at age 30. This story, we’re told, is set immediately prior to Yeshua, as he’s called here, formally commencing that ministry.
Early on in their friendship, Yeshua places His hand on a nasty bruise on Oren’s face and eye, healing it instantly. As the story develops, others in Nazareth talk about Yeshua’s reputation as someone who does miracles. The carpenter also makes and distributes bread to the needy. It’s implied that no one really knows where His seemingly limitless supply of bread came from.
These miraculous abilities are consistent with the kinds of miracles Jesus does in Scripture. That said, this fictional dramatization of Yeshua could lead some to believe that Jesus had a public, miraculous ministry that was well-known in His hometown before the official ministry that Scripture chronicles. But Scripture itself tells us that people of Nazareth only know Jesus as “the carpenter’s son” (Matthew 13:55-56), and that they’re surprised and skeptical about Jesus’ new spiritual calling at that point in the biblical record.
In a broadly similar way, Yeshua dispenses a lot of spiritual wisdom to Oren as He teaches Oren about carpentry. Some of what He says seems to be broadly in line with established, orthodox Christian theology. When a rebellious lamb of a townsperson takes off on his own, Yeshua and Oren find it and return it to the man, with Yeshua saying, “This wandering lamb belongs to Nathaniel. He likes to stray away from his master. But don’t let him get far. We all have to help watch over each other’s flocks.”
Yeshua also talks about His perspective on the tools He uses as a carpenter, and how they lovingly and carefully shape the objects He creates. It’s easy to read a deeper spiritual interpretation into His words: “Oren, a carpenter’s work requires precision, exactness, patience, diligence,” Yeshua says. “Each creation will reach its full measure through being tested. Proven. And refined. Again and again. A carpenter will consider each of his creations something valuable and worthy of his effort. He surrounds himself with effective hands, tools and instruments willing to help in his work. He lets no resource go to waste. From the strong, well-rooted trunk [of a tree] to the unsightly thorn—even those things … have value.”
A few other times, however, Yeshua’s wisdom feels more like general self-help affirmation. At one point, for example, Yeshua appeals to gut feelings and intuition as a path to making good decisions: “Don’t put off what you feel should be done, or you’ll miss the moment.”
At another point, Yeshua tells Oren, “Your heart has been through much, yet it is good.” In Mark 10:18, in contrast, Jesus won’t even let someone else use that word to describe Him, let alone anyone else: “‘Why do you call me good?’ Jesus answered. ‘No one is good—except God alone.’” (Elsewhere, Oren’s father admonishes him similarly: “Life’s troubles will always come. Do not overburden yourself with them. Follow your heart, nothing else. This is what will help you through dark times.”)
Yeshua heals Oren once, which—not surprisingly—prompts Oren to seek Him out for another round when he’s injured in another fight (albeit this one with his own brother). Yeshua declines to heal him, saying, “The Father does not like to see his children suffer. But if He healed everyone when they wanted, it would deny them the chance to learn to avoid the pain and consequences.” Then He adds something that feels quite close to the oft-quoted, but nonetheless unbiblical, cliché The Lord helps those who help themselves: “The human experience allows spirits to feel, learn, adjust and develop through their own efforts and focus.”
If the film takes some of those questionable theological missteps, however, it also gets some core things right. We see that in Yeshua’s deep—and deeply personal—love for Oren, despite Oren’s weaknesses and shortcomings. When Oren describes says of himself, “I’m nobody,” Yeshua counters, “You’re somebody to Me. Somebody to your family. You matter to others more than you know. Seek God’s will, not your own.”
Yeshua encourages Oren to visit his father’s grave and seems to understand that the young fighter has unfinished grieving to do: “Visiting those who have passed on reminds us of what is important in life,” he tells Oren. “You should visit him when you are ready.”
Yeshua also challenges Oren to focus on serving others’ needs, not just his own, with “endurance, persistence and self-sacrifice.”
Three years after the main events of the movie, Yeshua is crucified in Jerusalem (we see a bit of the Last Supper immediately before that event). The earthquake described in Scripture at that moment rocks Nazareth, doing minor damage to the town.
After the earthquake, Nathaniel, who’s a shepherd in Nazareth, tells Oren, “You know all of this is happening just as He said it would. He said he would destroy and build the temple in three days. He told us everything. It was all there. To some, He’s a teacher. A rabbi. A carpenter. But to all, He’s a Savior. They think by crucifying Him that they’ll be done with Him. But this, this will not be the end of Him.”
Oren prays near the end of the movie, saying, “My heavenly Father, please help me. My heart feels crushed. I need strength to endure. I can no longer take this pain alone. Please give me strength to continue. I pray for peace. In his name, my Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.” (And Oren does call him Jesus here, not Yeshua.)
[Spoiler Warning] Jesus, robed in white, appears and hugs Oren, showing him the wounds in His hands.
None really. One scene late in the movie shows Oren and Mira in bed together, who are now married, as they’re awakened by the earthquake. Elsewhere, they share a tender embrace. All of that said, while Oren and Mira’s courtship is chaste and very innocent, the very fact that they spend time alone together, one on one, projects a contemporary understanding of courtship back into a time when such behavior likely would have been scandalous.
Male fighters, including Oren, are shown shirtless as they battle.
As you’ve likely surmised by now, there’s quite a lot of violence in The Carpenter. That said, almost all of it takes place in fighting rings with passionate, screaming spectators around the perimeter. The fighting here definitely has an mixed martial arts flair, with punches, kicks and martial-art-like attacks and defenses all in play.
Oren takes an absolute pounding repeatedly. But he gives as good—or better—than he gets, often unleashing a flurry of brutal blows on his opponent. Oren dropkicks a nearly vanquished opponent out of the ring. Not surprisingly, Oren frequently has cuts and bruises on his face, especially after he and his brother get into a fight.
Amos is a physician who coaches Oren on the parts of the body that are the most vulnerable and legal to attack (no shots to the “family jewels,” as Amos crudely suggests at one point.)
We hear that a particularly brutish forthcoming opponent named Simeon has had multiple opponents carried out on stretchers.
We see the fall from a roof that eventually claims Oren’s father’s life, an accident exacerbated by the fact that a huge wooden beam then lands on top of him as well. He is in a great deal of pain after the accident and until his death (perhaps a few hours later).
Oren gets into a scuffle with some Roman soldiers, who pursue him through the streets of Nazareth.
None.
Bettors at fights sometimes have goblets in their hands, suggesting that they’ve paired betting with drinking.
When he’s being pursued by Roman soldiers, Oren runs into Yeshua and hides behind a piece of carpentry equipment. Yeshua does not turn Oren over to them when the soldiers arrive seconds later.
Throughout the movie, the soundtrack includes heavy, distorted guitars. We also hear snippets of a couple of metal songs, including the chorus of Drowning Pool’s hit “Bodies”: “Let the bodies hit the floor,” we hear repeatedly during a fighting match.
I can honestly say that I’ve never seen anything quite like The Carpenter. And I suspect that the area where Jesus, mixed martial arts and heavy metal overlap on a Venn diagram is potentially a fairly small one. I never thought I’d write this, but The Carpenter feels a bit like equal parts of Rocky, Gladiator and The Chosen.
The core of the plot is driven by Oren’s rising stature as a fighter to be feared in Palestine. In that sense, the movie hews pretty closely to a Rocky-like trajectory, completely with fight scenes interspersed with the obligatory training montages.
Interspersed with what is, essentially, an underdog sports movie, is a parallel story about Oren’s growing relationship with Yeshua as the master carpenter imparts his vocational—and spiritual—wisdom to his protégé. Much of what Yeshua teaches is, broadly speaking, in harmony with Scripture, though a few of the things he says feel more like a Disney fable than anything in the Bible.
Also worth noting: Oren asks Yeshua directly about what he thinks of Oren’s fighting. Yeshua doesn’t answer directly, but he suggests that we evaluate our calling based on whether it can be blessing to others or not. Oren’s fighting certainly isn’t a blessing to those he bashes in the nose, but his success is a blessing to Mira, his friends and the people of Nazareth. And that’s probably the film’s answer to that question, even if Yeshua declines to give one.
All of that makes for a wildly divergent mashup of genres that typically don’t spend time together. At times, the result felt a bit corny and unbelievable. Whether or not ancient Israel had MMA fight clubs, I can’t really say. But, that said, the movie has a good heart and seems designed to appeal to those who love MMA, Jesus or both. And it could even include some UFC fans who’ve never seen a Christian movie before, and who just might be prompted to think about Jesus in a deeper way.
After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.
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