Strong personalities demand strong biopics, and it's hard to think of a stronger personality than that of Martin Luther. Though centuries of discontent had set the stage, Luther, through little more than the force of his willful intellect, instituted the Reformation that ended centuries of uncontested Catholic authority in Europe, beginning the process by simply nailing his famous 95 Theses to the door of a church in a distant pocket of Germany in 1517. Not that that was his intention. A man tormented by his own perceived lapses in piety, he abhorred failings elsewhere, and let that anger snowball into a revolution. Joseph Fiennes plays Luther in director Eric Till's biopic Luther, and his performance captures some of the doubt and fire that led to the Reformation. Praying fervently, arguing with the devil, and delivering caustic lectures against relic devotion and indulgences (the practice of trading heavenly forgiveness for cash), the unimposing Fiennes may not suggest the burly Luther's plain-talking peasant background, but he at least captures the charisma. The film itself has a lot less going on. Opting for a straightforward, facts-intensive retelling of Luther's life, Till clearly invested a lot of time in the look of the film, but little in how to tell the story engagingly. He even throws in a wide-eyed, disabled little mute girl (who appears never to age) whenever the action starts to get too dull. Though the film does an admirable job of laying out the historical issues at work, it never gets beyond the level of an introductory textbook. It has a textbook's awkwardness at times, too. Luther's desire to include as many incidents as possible makes it a bit unfocused–See Luther translate the New Testament into German! Wonder at his awkward courtship of Katharina von Bora!–and it seems unlikely that crowds really shouted "Luther's back!" with the same inflection as basketball fans cheering their favorite player. Till's film brims with good intentions, but even less important religious scholars than Luther know what kind of road those pave.