Scarlet Pimpernel Of The Vatican by J.P. Gallagher

Bolt also wrote the screenplay for “The Mission” (1986, PG), which stars Jeremy Irons, Aidan Quinn and Liam Neeson, among others. Sir Thomas More was considerably more ambiguous in real life, but, in Robert Bolt’s 1966 screenplay “A Man for All Seasons” (based upon Bolt’s identically titled 1960 stage play and not rated), More (who is now a canonized Roman Catholic saint) surely ranks among the most inspiring heroes ever filmed.But it omits the post-war Christian conversion that, in a very real sense, saved Zamperini’s life - the “redemption” that appears in Laura Hillenbrand’s title and that, for many readers, is the most powerful part of her remarkably powerful book. Angelina Jolie’s 2014 film “Unbroken” (PG-13) is based on Laura Hillenbrand’s astonishing 2010 biography of Louis Zamperini, “Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption.” The movie covers his success as an Olympic athlete, his near death from a bomber crash into the sea, his survival of 47 days adrift on a raft in the Pacific Ocean and his excruciating ordeal in Japanese prison camps.There are, however, more than a few Hollywood films that have treated religious faith positively, and this column will highlight six of them. That may not always have been true - think, among many examples, of such films as “The Song of Bernadette” (1943), “Going My Way” (1944), “Joan of Arc” (1948) and “Ben-Hur” (1959) - but, in recent films and television shows, religious believers are commonly portrayed as hypocrites, lunatics, joyless fanatics and/or oppressive tyrants. It’s widely recognized that Hollywood is typically unsympathetic to religion.

Scarlet Pimpernel Of The Vatican by J.P. Gallagher