The Message

I have a very simple and straightforwardly question, why this excellent movie by this high rating is not between the IMDb top 250 movies??? you can see other movies have lower ratings are between top 250 and also the number of voters of this movie is enough to be in top If this is not a political matter how you explain it??? This is a cinema and movies related website and not a political one!!! why you are afraid and frighten by this promotion??? It has a simple answer! You do not want to show a real Islamic movie in this site because this may result to correct all misunderstandings about the real Islam and Muslims! So, hide this movie in history, IF YOU CAN!

Cinematically, it was pretty good. Clearly a lot of work went into the sets, costumes & locations. While the acting was adequate, I have to disagree with other reviews in that I did not think it was Anthony Quinn's greatest work. Maybe because I viewed it through the lens of Christianity or maybe it was the way the actors talked to the camera when addressing Mohammed (i.e., it is against Islam to show the likeness of Mohammed - sort of a parallel to Jews never wring the word God - they spell it G-d), the movie had an odd "vibe" about it. The story itself is difficult to follow, much like the Koran itself. Though downplayed in the movie, early messages from God conflicted with later messages. It also plays up the 'peaceful' side of Islam, (but there again the movie has some fantastic battle scenes, if you overlook the overly fake looking blood) which stands in stark contrast to the evidence we see on the nightly news. Ideally, every Muslim would embrace the teachings of this movie and renounce the more radical teachings - not just the modern day "terrorist" mindset, but the way the early Muslims treated women in the early years seems to be quite different than today. I can't think of a Christian equivalent of this movie, as most movies about early Christianity only tell a small portion of the story. This movie attempts to explain the roots of Islam from when Mohammed began hearing from God at age 40, in about 610 AD to the full establishment of Islam around the world. It does to a reasonably good job for the early parts of Islam, but I kind of got lost in all the who's fighting who scenes. It was apparently all historically verified at the time of its making by Islamic scholars,which is explained at the beginning and end of the movie, which only adds to the eerie feeling the movie being less documentary and more propagandist. So, in short, the cinematic presentation is quite good, but the story is hard to follow and I felt it had a propagandist "vibe" throughout the movie. If you have 3 hours to kill and are interested in the subject matter, you'll likely enjoy it. For me I got restless in the middle when I started to get confused about who is battling who and for what reason.

To date this is the best film about the beginning of Islam with hollywood production values. It's very entertaining, has lot's of action and also manages to inform about Islam in a positive light, as bettering the peoples lives the religion touches.