It also makes the unfortunate casting of Garfield feel like more of a blunder with each passing, stakes-raising scene. Early on, the “Spiderman” star’s youthful arrogance pings well off Driver’s prickly frustration, the pair sliding nicely into their roles as underground heroes for the persecuted. But as events separate the two, and Rodrigues becomes the central figure of faith-tested heartbreak, Garfield’s emoting falters. His anguish looks childish, not soul-threatening, and his locks are distractingly lush, as if he had a prison coiffeur. Faring better is Neeson, who emerges Kurtz-like to theologically spar with the shaken Rodrigues, projecting a cowed giant for whom matters of life and death have become resignedly practical.
The movie’s true breadth of performance is in the Japanese actors, however, starting with Yosuke Kubozuka (“Ichi”
as the priests’ weak-willed, opportunistically Christian guide Kichijiro, and continuing with Yoshi Oida (“The Pillow Book”
and Shin’ya Tsukamoto (“Tetsuo, the Iron Man”
as devout villagers. Among the persecutors, Tadanobu Asano (“Thor”
, as the imprisoned Rodrigues’s interpreter, turns smiling exchanges into a wily form of oppressiveness.
