Final Rating: 2/5
From director Garrett Batty, The Carpenter tells the larger-than-life story of Oren (Kameron Krebs), a “Northman” in Ancient Palestine who becomes an apprentice to Jesus Christ. On the side, Oren makes a career of participating in a favourite sport of the time: mixed martial arts.
Reminiscent of real fight promotion, the movie is billed as “The King of the Ring meets the Prince of Peace.” Unfortunately, Batty’s film lives up to the words of that promise but not the spirit. Carpenter is shallow, thin, and a bit of a slog. The fights are good, but ultimately held back by the lack of interesting character moments or buildup between them
Carpenter opens with a timeline of the biblical events before smash cutting to a drone shot of a mountain and announcing “Cana, 29 AD.” Chunky guitars precede footage of a bare knuckle boxing match attended by a huge, enthusiastic crowd. Before long, Oren is stepping into the ring, which the film juxtaposes with scenes of Oren’s adoptive father attempting and fatally failing to do repairs on his house.
In this opening shot, Carpenter’s biggest flaw is immediately on display: the movie wants to be three things at once, and won’t commit to any of them fully. As a faith-based film, Carpenter has an element of proselytizing to it; as a sports film, there’s an emphasis on great fights; and as a dramatic film, Carpenter wants to tell a story about a man dealing with the death of his father. This lack of focus permeates the film, with Batty unable or uninterested in giving all three directions the attention they need to flourish.
Batty is clearly most interested in the fights. Together with cinematographer William Collinson, he captures entertaining, kinetic, adrenaline-charged bouts. The fights are plotted out in exciting ways, too: an early match has Oren identifying and systematically destroying an enemy’s weak spots one by one, reminiscent of Guy Ritchie’s recent Sherlock Holmes films. Between the fun camerawork and cheesy, generic pump-up-metal score, the tone of Carpenter’s fights is exciting, making up for imperfect fight choreography.
But outside of the fights, Carpenter never takes off
The film hardly ever seems like ministry – which is almost certainly for the best – but also can’t excel dramatically. The main dramatic thread concerns Oren moving to Nazareth and taking up fighting in the local pits. While there, he additionally becomes an apprentice to Yeshua/Jesus (Jeff Dickamore) and begins a romance with local widow Mira (Aurora Florence).
Of the two, Mira is most underserved, with most of her and Oren’s relationship happening offscreen. Yeshua is portrayed as a nearly omnipotent mentor, dispensing nearly infinite wisdom, with a charismatic performance from Dickamore, despite woefully boring writing. Generally, however, the writing feels most like padding to keep fights from happening too close together, the movie often misunderstanding its strengths.
While a clear passion for martial arts shines through, Carpenter is otherwise dramatically inert. There are flashes of a fun movie, but Batty and crew take a silly premise too seriously to make the most of it.
