Revisiting "The Passion of the Christ" part 2

In my last Passion post, I never got around to saying what I don’t like about the Passion. It’s this: I feel that Passion is gratuitously violent. As I hinted earlier, I’m all for sex and violence in the arts if it’s warranted, if it serves a purpose. Gibson’s film, however, feels like bloodbath for bloodbath’s sake. It doesn’t make me appreciate that Christ died for my sins. It makes me wince, duck down in my seat and look at my watch. Passion feels like it was made by a guy whose parents never let him watch any Friday the 13th movies, so he decided to make his own. Only about Jesus. I’m also becoming more skeptical of Gibson’s intentions. As Jeffrey Overstreet notes, Gibson is re-releasing a special edition of Passion, minus five minutes of gore: My real question: Which five minutes? Is the crow eating the thief's eyes gone? The barbed whip to the gut? The nail-pounding? The "flip the cross over" maneuver? The crown of thorn pressing? A few of the many stumbles along the path? I thought the whole point was to "put us there" for every drop of blood along the way? As I've said before, I admire the film in some ways, but I'm disappointed by it in other ways. There are many films that bring me to a rewarding meditation on the sufferings of Christ without bludgeoning me so intensely that I can't think straight. And after hearing so many come to the defense of the film's extreme violence, I wonder... why back-pedal now? Is this an admission that it was too violent to begin with? I'm sure Gibson's intentions have nothing to do with profit. But, as Overstreet also points out, according to tabloid-rag New York Daily News, Gibson has apparently bought himself an island. Yeah, that’s what every good Christian needs. Meanwhile, in New York, a camel was spotted trying to ram its way through Cleopatra's Needle.