A very nice cast was assembled for this fictional story about a fourth Wise Man
who missed the birth of Jesus. Martin Sheen plays the fourth Magi who just
seems to be missing running into the prophesied Messiah.
Some other obligations prevented Sheen as Artaban the fourth Wise Man from
making the journey to Bethlehem where the other three Balthazar, Caspar, and
Melchior viewed the post birth at the stable. When Sheen goes accompanied by his faithful and grumbling servant Alan Arkin the family just left and in time before the Romans come in on that genocidal mission
from Herod to kill all the babies there. Before he leaves Sheen manages to
save one of them.
Then its off to Egypt where the holy family is bound for. But as the gospels
give scant information about Jesus's growing up we've got a lot of room for
fiction. He misses the child again, but instead Sheen helps out a colony of
beggars become a self sufficient tribe. And as a Magi he's got some gifts of
healing, no miracles to be sure, but the kind of stuff Hippocrates had researched in the ancient world.
This was a life of service and well led. And before the film ends Sheen witnesses the greatest of all miracles and he's told by the highest authorities that it was a life well led.
Sheen and Arkin make quite a pair, a kind of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza
kind of relationship. But this Quixote tilts no windmills though he faces some long odds at times.
This is a good religious film, not overly preachy, but it's point about making
your life count on earth is well made.
