Constantine’s Sword, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Oren Jacoby’s fascinating and exceedingly relevant to these times documentary, explores some of the massive amount of violence and ill done in God’s name throughout history
— a skipped-stone journey of remembrance and reckoning. Starting with
the story of conservative Christian ideology being peddled at the Air
Force Academy in Colorado Springs (where fliers for Mel Gibson’s The Passion
were handed out, and Ted Haggard’s New Life ministries touted) and
winding back in time, the movie follows author and former Roman
Catholic priest James Carroll as he interweaves his own family history
with a grander inquisition into faith, and in particular the nasty, tangled intersection between Christianity and Judaism.

Neither naked provocation nor burrowing analysis is a part of Jacoby’s
agenda here. In fact, as soon as the film alights on some engrossing
historical nugget — Roman general Constantine’s 310 A.D. conversion,
which ushered in the iconography of the cross — it’s just as quickly
off to something else. This occasionally makes for some minor
frustration, since one wants a deeper probe and massage of certain
topics. Carroll, though, is a fantastic and articulate guide, and this exceedingly contemplative and engrossing work
is both topically important — warning of what happens when military
might and religious fervor are mixed — and intellectually stimulating
as all get out. Film needn’t always be pat in scope and definitive in conclusion, as this enthralling film-as-theological-conversation ably demonstrates.

Housed in a regular Amray case, Constantine’s Sword comes to DVD in anamorphic widescreen. A very personal 90-second introduction by Gabriel Byrne toplines the list of supplemental extras, with the Irish actor (unaffiliated with the project) talking about how much it moved him. Also included are a single extended scene, running nine-plus minutes, and an outtake/deleted scene, running seven-plus minutes. Textual, scrollable director’s notes and biographies of Jacoby and Carroll round out the bonus features, along with a small gallery of trailers for Michael Apted’s 49 Up and other First Run Features releases. To purchase the movie on DVD, click here. A (Movie) B+ (Disc)