What sort of movie refreshment does one bring to a grinding, blood-soaked cinematic rendering of Christ's torture and crucifixion? Buttered popcorn and a Coke? Red Vines? A Kit-Kat?

Snack food of any stripe would seem vaguely sacrilegious while watching Mel Gibson's much-anticipated, much-dreaded ‘‘The Passion of the Christ,’’ for the simple reason that the movie resides so far from what we consider popular entertainment. Just listen to the pundits. Nobody is debating the movie's watchability. The controversy cuts much deeper than that: Social responsibility, anti-Semitism, the sanctity of free speech.

Let's put aside those issues for a moment and concede that ‘‘The Passion of the Christ’’ is a valid work of art, not merely an exploitation movie aimed at evangelical Christians who have gobbled up every advance-purchase seat from here to Heritage U.S.A. Charged with courage, tragedy and acute human sensitivity, it's a drama of the most powerful order, and impossible to dismiss.

Gibson — who collected an Oscar for directing himself as a messianic Scottish freedom fighter in ‘‘Braveheart’’ (1995) — begins the movie with a gorgeous, fog-shrouded shot of the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus of Nazareth (Jim Caviezel) spends the last night before his crucifixion, suffering intensely, bleeding from every pore. During his ordeal in the garden, Jesus is visited by Satan, envisioned by the filmmakers as effete and genderless, like Ziggy Stardust without the fruity threads.
Played by actress Rosalinda Celentano, the devil casts an eerie, dissipated shadow over the drama that follows, reappearing in crowds to lay a dull, evil gaze on Christ's suffering.

From the garden, the movie rolls forward to depict the last 12 hours of Christ's life: his betrayal by Judas (Luca Lionello) and arrest by the scandalized Jewish leaders of Jerusalem, known as the Pharisees; his conference with Pilate (Hristo Shopov), the Roman governor who fears a popular revolt if he doesn't cede to the Pharisees' demands; whippings, beatings, indignities and finally Christ's agonizing march to Calvary, the rocky hill on which he was crucified.

Gibson, who wrote the script with Benedict Fitzgerald, doesn't let the movie get bogged down in biblical pontification, which immediately sets it apart from most Christian-produced New Testament movies, such as the recent ‘‘Gospel of John.’’ For a biblically inspired film, the dramatic flow is swift and coherent, and the sepia-toned Italian shooting locales and era-specific dialogue (spoken in Latin and Aramaic, with English subtitles) lend it a powerful sense of authenticity. Of course, not every history geek will be satisfied — some have derided the movie, claiming that Greek, not Latin, was the lingua franca of the Roman Empire in that part of Asia.

Other qualities set ‘‘The Passion of the Christ’’ apart from the rank-and-file passion play, most notably the bloodshed, which is enormous. The violence is never pornographic — which is to say, there is always genuine, redeeming resonance in the images — but sensitive audiences (which includes many Christians, I would imagine) will be aghast at the sight of, say, Jesus being turned into ground chuck by a pair of cackling, whip-wielding legionnaires. To which I say: What? You want a candy-coated crucifixion? Watching ‘‘The Passion of the Christ’’ is like absorbing a trembling, clenched-fist sermon from a crazy priest — it makes you feel, it makes you react. This is particularly true in respect to Christ's mother, played with heartbreaking conviction by Romanian actress Maia Morgenstern, who must stand by and watch her son absorb inhuman abuses.

If nothing else, Gibson makes us remember what used to pass for justice in this world — a world the protagonist, even non- believers must admit, helped transform. Caviezel's haunted, pleading eyes and meek screen persona made him a natural to play Jesus, and Gibson was no doubt impressed also by the actor's conservative Catholic background.

Caviezel (‘‘Frequency’’) does his best, non-anguished acting in the sermon flashback scenes that Gibson sprinkles throughout the movie, giving us brief respites from the violence. Italian bombshell Monica Bellucci (‘‘Matrix Revolutions’’) is tear-stained but otherwise unremarkable as redeemed harlot Mary Magdalene.

Owing to the traditionally anti-Semitic tenor of passion plays, some anxiety accompanies the movie's arrival in theaters, and it's inevitable that certain audiences will choose to selectively ignore the film's message of forgiveness and love. And those people, in the choking plume of their hate, should stop and ask themselves the question: After all these years, who is it that's really killing Jesus?

Starring: Jim Caviezel, Monica Bellucci, Maia Morgenstern
Playing: Now playing at theaters Valleywide
Rating: R (sequences of graphic violence)
Running time: 127 minutes
Grade: B+