As writer-director-composer Jeymes Samuel pokes holes at piety and pokes fun at Christian faith’s preference for status over supplication, The Book of Clarence seems like a scintillating spiritual sequel to Samuel’s The Harder They Fall. 

That exceptional throwback Western understood how violence visited upon the oppressed in America rang out across several centuries. Here, he tells a fundamentally Black story that reaches out across millennia and nations to attack the whitewashing of spiritual deliverance.

It’s an epic where our hero believes biblical tales to be bullshit, a satire that finds the fire of baptism at the end of a fat spliff, and a dual role showcase for LaKeith Stanfield (as the speculative Clarence and his … well, equally speculative twin brother and apostle Thomas).

It’s also got opening chapters full of crash zooms, iris transitions, classic title cards, cobblestone street chariot races, Italian studio sets, gladiatorial combat and orchestral music bumping up against big beats — a merger of old-school opulence and modern-day mischief. But Samuel ultimately falls into a sort of itchy spot between impishness and inspiration that The Book of Clarence cannot successfully scratch. Its appropriate destination and eventual destiny become two different things.

Sure, Samuel got Sony to give him $40 million for a film that lets Barabbas tell an impudent Roman soldier he has speared the “wrong heel, motherfucker” or that twice cuts to Clarence’s comically furrowed brow as the Virgin Mary and Joseph insist the angel Gabriel “came upon” them. But Samuel wouldn’t have gotten it without ultimately caving to the superficially comforting homilies of almost every other film concerning the story of Jesus Christ.

Circa 33 A.D., Clarence is a drug-dealing, chariot-racing hustler in Lower City, Jerusalem, who has run afoul of a vice peddler. If he can’t make up his debt in 30 days, he’s dead. If only Clarence could roll with the protection of the generally untouchable Jesus and his apostles. So he tries to join them — first with baptism, then with an impossible mission (to free Barabbas) and finally to invoke “massive testicular fortitude,” fraudulently claim his own ability to make miracles, and emphasize profit over prophet.

For a while, everything’s alright, yes, everything’s fine. But Jesus Christ gets the same superstar treatment he always does, to a point where it crowds out Clarence’s own story. In its final hour, Samuel’s film bizarrely shifts its focus toward stylish dramatization of stonings, suppers and other familiar incidents and away from the fierce impetus of its freshly invented characters — hampered further by haphazard ending and shoehorned dramatic soliloquies. Although sometimes wickedly witty and thoughtfully challenging, Samuel’s effort to refashion the religious epic is no immaculate conception.

As studios continue a streak of judicious 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray releases, an underperforming title like The Book of Clarence isn’t going to get pressed on the ultimate format. As such, the 1080p transfer of its Blu-ray version is clean and crisp, and its DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack (though missing the extra oomph of Atmos or even a 7.1 soundtrack) does the job in the film’s more thunderous moments as well as for its omnipresent soundtrack.

Extras include a commentary with Samuel and Stanfield, a gag reel and three production featurettes: Band of Brothers: Meet the Cast; Song of Songs: An Epic Collaboration; and The Gospel of Jeymes: On the Set with Jeymes Samuel.