Luther

The 16th-century priest Martin Luther (Joseph Fiennes), appalled at the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church, launches the Protestant Reformation, which quickly grows into a movement much larger than him. Camille Thomasson and Bart Gavigan’s script is plodding and formless (matched by the direction of Eric Till), with little sense of the political atmosphere in Germany at the time that saved Luther from becoming just another pile of heretic ashes. Fiennes plays Luther as a hand-wringing worrywart with a penchant for risible dialogue (“Some days, I’m so depressed I can hardly get out of bed”). It’s an earnest but ineffective performance, as are those by most of the others in the cast: Bruno Ganz, Alfred Molina, Jonathan Firth and Sir Peter Ustinov (twinkling archly as Prince Friedrich of Saxony).