A METAPHORICAL gauntlet is thrown down when Mary (Noa Cohen), straight to camera, challenges us to believe her story or not. Just as well, because most of Timothy Michael Hayes’s screenplay for Mary (Cert.15), a Netflix production, is speculative addition to what the canonical and apocryphal Gospels tell us.

Most movies, of necessity, do some filling of gaps. Here, the Virgin’s youthful hope of peace on earth contrasts sharply with the old dispensation, embodied by Anthony Hopkins’s bloodthirsty Herod. There is another battle for her soul via the ubiquitous challenges of Lucifer (Eamon Farren) and an equally sinister Gabriel (the boxer Dudley O’Shaughnessy).

Everyone seems to know the Messianic secret, instead of its slowly dawning on a few people. Despite many such questionable embellishments, the film does do justice to certain characters, such as the prophetess Anna (Susan Brown).

But it is political and military oppression that pervades director D. J. Caruso’s film. It is hard to see in this scenario how Mary’s assertion that Jesus is the greatest gift that the world has ever known can come true. In this very noisy film, there is little chance that men of strife will hear the angels sing.

Released on Netflix