Schreiber's character in The Omen, an American diplomat named Robert Thorn, tries to maintain a pragmatic view, too. "There is no devil, there is no God, there is only here and now, life," he says, an attitude that's hard to maintain if you're raising the ultimate bad seed. Like The Da Vinci Code, the new Omen has its hero searching for the truth through exotic settings; here it's Rome and London (although most of the film was shot in Prague). And the Catholic Church doesn't come off much better than in Da Vinci. An evil priest first suggests that Robert deceive his wife and substitute Damien for their stillborn son.
"The true nature of evil has never been more apparent" than today, the film's director, John Moore, says in its production notes. And the movie includes some topical flourishes; the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US are seen as harbingers of Armageddon. Yet the new Omen, like the original it so closely resembles, is really about the chase.
The King is about evil, but even more about fathers and sons. When Elvis (Bernal) looks up the father he has never known, Pastor Sandow (Hurt), the minister rejects the son as part of his sinful past. It's no surprise that movies filled with Christian symbolism are also about fathers and sons, but here the religious theme serves the story of Elvis, not the other way around. The minister's rejection sets off a chain of events that leads to violence and issues of guilt and retribution. But when Elvis throws his father's words back at him at the end and says, "I need to get right with God," it is a taunt and not an expression of spiritual discovery.
In Hurt's bold depiction, the minister is the picture of pride and vanity. Bouncing along to Christian rock, he's the uncool middle-aged guy who can't see how uncool he is.
The satiric version of that exists in the funny 2004 film Saved!, set in a Christian high school. Martin Donovan plays Pastor Skip, who turns cartwheels onstage at a student assembly and yells, "Jesus is in the house!"
Like The King, Saved! is less about faith than about the smugness, hypocrisy and self-righteousness organized religion can foster. Mandy Moore plays a prom queen who pridefully parades her Christian goodness because she wants to be admired, and Jena Malone plays a pregnant teenager who causes people around her to question their rigid judgments. This satire makes clear what the current religious-themed films say in a more subversive way: Faith may (or may not) be deep, but organized religion can be devilish. And when someone in The Da Vinci Code says, "My God, I don't believe this," he doesn't mean it literally.
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