Rejected Joe Eszterhas' Maccabees script is "a Jewish Braveheart'

Sharon Waxman of The Wrap has now read the script that Joe Eszterhas turned in for the Mel Gibson production of a film about the Jewish hero Judah Maccabee. Gibson and Warner Bros rejected it, setting off a chain of insults last week between director and writer. As for the screenplay, Waxman says it's bloody. "Exceedingly bloody," she writes. "Hardly mainstream." She calls it remarkably faithful to the 2nd century B.C. biblical tale, but she wonders "does anyone outside the Anti-Defamation League want to see a Jewish Braveheart'?"

From her story:

On the face of it, this is a script that Mel Gibson should absolutely love: A band of pious underdogs take on an evil overlord. (They don’t paint their faces a la “Braveheart,” but the Jewish women are physically branded as harlots.)

It is full of throat-slitting and cutting off of heads. There are miles of heads on stakes. In one scene, a woman plunges a dagger into the eye of an opponent. Hearts are cut out of dead bodies.

And the fighting is full of Rambo-like relish...

Like “Passion of the Christ,” “The Maccabees” assert their principles in the face of a sadistic, heathen overlord (that would be the Greek-Syrian Antiochus instead of the Roman overlord Pontius Pilate)...