Cheap The Gospel Road (DVD) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of The Gospel Road

Good music, not so great story telling
For a motion picture, The Gospel Road falls short. The soundtrack is far more impressive than the film itself, featuring "He Turned the Water into Wine" and more. These are classic gospel songs that serve the movie well. At times, though, the movie borders on cheesy. As a child, Jesus is ultra-blond -- the child Jesus is actually the son of the adult Jesus, also blond. It's a narrated story, Cash providing the narration, and the movie would have come off stronger had the actors performed more of the story. The wedding scene at Cana is a high-point, incorporating ethnic characters and traditional dance alongside Cash's classic "Turned Water into Wine." Had the movie achieved this energy throughout, I'd be more enthusiastic about it.

---

The Man Comes Around
At last on DVD, this was Johnny Cash, June Carter and Kris Kristofferson's labor of love. The packaging, however, is somewhat misleading. Rather than tying in with the recent film, Walk the Line, it ought to be psychedelic and reflective of the concert gathering Explo '72. Sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ, Explo '72 rode the wave of '60s searchin' and caught the vibe of the Jesus People movement (which also made the cover of Time magazine). <
> <
>Johnny Cash appeared at this very eclectic gathering, singing a song which later made the soundtrack for this film. Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge sang "In the Garden" (not the Dylan song. Billy Graham was there along with a varied roster that included Larry Norman, Randy Matthews, Andrae Crouch and the Disciples and the Speers gospel singing family. Before Keith Green thought of offering his albums free, Campus Crusade sent the record from Explo '72 to anyone who asked for it, as a tie in to TV shows which featured Graham and cuts from the concerts. <
> <
>The Jesus People at the time rejected the Hollywood blonde-haired, blue eyed portrayls of Max Von Sydow in The Greatest Story Ever Told and Ted Neely's personna in Jesus Christ Superstar, which in their view left off the end of the story. The downside of this film is that the actor playing the Man from Nazareth is also blonde-haired, but not because Cash doesn't know better. It's because the director plays the part, with June Carter as Mary Magdalene in similar anecdotal bits. This film is packed with music; Cash sings songs like "I See Men as Trees Walking", reprising his set at Explo '72, and June covers John Denver's "Follow Me," certainly as imaginative as Superstar's "I Don't Know How to Love Him." <
> <
>This was never meant to be a complete life of Jesus, but rather a personal reflection following the portrait in the Gospels. Now on widescreen, this film shows both a seldom-seen hearfelt and passionate side of Cash and Carter, and recaptures what was once the calling card of the Jesus Movement: its enthusiasm and contagious joy.

---

Low Budget, Yet Super Cool Christian Witness from Johnny Cash! GET THIS DVD!
If you are an active Christian and a Johnny Cash fan, you will LOVE this DVD! It is a labor of love, apparently funded by Johnny Cash himself, but you can tell by the look on his face that this project is very important and very fun for him to be doing! <
> <
>They look like they grabbed a bunch of friends from the USA and flew everybody over to Israel to act out many Bible scenes on location. They show many scenes from the life of Jesus, mixed in with many Gospel songs by Johnny and a few others. <
> <
>Johnny narrates throughout the entire film, and every ten minutes or so they show him on camera, talking into the camera about Jesus. You can tell by the sincere and content look on his face that this is a project that he is very pleased to be working on! He is not sleepwalking through any of this, he is on the set and eager to do this the best way they possibly can! <
> <
>June Carter does GREAT in her brief scenes playing Mary Magdalene! She is very powerful and surprising. She shows the crying out loud joy of being in the presence of Jesus, and she is very endearing in her role here! <
> <
>The music is great! I have some of Johnny's Gospel albums recorded over a decade before this movie was made. Those old Gospel albums are great to listen to, but they do display a definitely dated recording style that sounds like pop music before the birth of rock-n-roll. The music on this DVD sounds like the much more polished and sophisticated musical style of Johnny Cash or Elvis in the early 1970's. <
> <
>The photography is very beautiful. There is great location scenery, and clever camera techniques used throughout. <
> <
>At 83 minutes, it is a bit on the short side, for a theatrical release, when I like a film to be at least 90 minutes or more. But it is a very good movie, anyway. <
> <
>My main criticism would be that they have a blonde-haired man playing the role of Jesus. He looks more like a viking than Jesus. They should have dyed his hair, since Jesus was definitely a Jew in the Middle East, 2,000 years ago, centuries before the blonde barbarians would join Western civilization. On the other hand, the blonde-haired Jesus makes him stand out from the crowd, as if he is special, so at first this seems like a mistake to keep the blonde hair, but then it seems like it helps reinforce that Jesus is one-of-a-kind in the scenes of this movie. <
> <
>My favorite Christian project from Johnny Cash is his 16 CD set of his reading the entire NEW TESTAMENT of the Bible! This is very reasonably priced for 16 CDs, and I highly recommend it for any Christian fans of Johnny Cash. <
> <
>I can also suggest that you check out THE GOSPEL COLLECTION by Johnny Cash, re-released in 1992. This CD contains the entire first two Gospel albums that Johnny recorded a decade before this movie was made, HYMNS BY JOHNNY CASH and HYMNS FROM THE HEART. <
> <
>Actually, his first Gospel album, HYMNS BY JOHNNY CASH, has been re-mastered and re-released much more recently, in 2002, and sounds much cleaner and louder, with a nice CD booklet, so that is a good buy, too. But THE GOSPEL COLLECTION gives you both of his first two Gospel albums on one CD, nearly one hour of music, and is the only way to purchase his second Gospel album, HYMNS FROM THE HEART, as far as I can tell.