When movies square up to the story of the Resurrection, restraint has rarely been the watchword. From the bloated pieties of The Greatest Story Ever Told to the brutish torture-fest of Mel Gibson’s infamous The Passion of The Christ, the film-going faithful have been obliged to tread a via dolorosa that has either numbed them with shock or infantilised them with awe.

Perhaps it is the very facility of the medium that has been the biblical epic’s undoing. When you can witness CGI-miracles performed on screens week in, week out, it becomes difficult to give a resurrection – even The Resurrection – a fresh slant.

The shrewdest ploy of this Easter’s Risen (in cinemas now) is to ground its mood in rock-bottom realism. Indeed, rocks are just about all we can see in the first 10 minutes, be it the harsh rubbled landscape of Judaea, AD 33, or the ones whizzing from the slings of a zealot horde in battle against their Roman occupiers.

This local insurgence is crushed thanks to the tactical nous of tough military tribune Clavius (Joseph Fiennes). But he has no sooner returned to HQ than his boss, Pilate (Peter Firth), sends him off again to supervise a crucifixion, Calvary way – and his own date with destiny.