It was not an emotional experience for me, but I enjoyed the movie and thought it was pretty realistic. It was nowhere near as gory as I'd been led to believe it would be. I'd avoided seeing it for the first few weeks because I had no desire to see 2-1/2 hours of endless beatings and gore, but when I actually saw it, it was pretty much what I thought happened historically. I also think it was pretty true to life that the Romans who whipped Christ actually did enjoy torturing another human being and thought it was all a big joke. History is full of sick people like that.
It would've been easy for Gibson to throw in one extra minute of film, even 30 seconds, to address Jewish concerns, but even without that I didn't find the film anti-Semitic. A lot of that was deliberate hype to create controversy and interest in the film. Of course I'm a gentile so I'm not seeing it through Jewish eyes. But the movie is pretty clear that it was the Romans who mercilessly beat Christ, not the Jews.