Um, I’d be hesitant to sing praises of a reviewer who finishes their review thusly: “I, too, was ready to thank any deity — be it Jesus, Buddha or Satan himself — who would turn off the projector and close the curtains.” The intent was humor, but jokes about giving thanks to Satan are about as funny as jokes about dead babies. Sadly, the reviewer’s writing is far more ham-handed and lame than the film in question, to his own discredit.

Yes, there are a great-many sub-par films marketed to Christians. To make matters worse, a great many of them are only superficially Christian. (And by “them” I mean both the films and the people they’re marketed to.)

But I’m not ready to jump on the sneering secular bandwagon of “look how clumsy and benighted those Christians are!” I frankly don’t have any desire to beat pagans at their own pagan game.

Are Christians capable of producing superior works of art? Of course. Up until about 100 years ago, Christian art dominated the visual arts, literature, music, etc. But then, for some reason, the church decided it would be worthwhile to play by the world’s rules, and the wheels fell off.

It’s time we returned to that older way, unashamed of the gospel, unafraid of the world.

I might agree with what Barry Hertz (of the National Post) says in his review of the movie “To Save a Life”, based solely on seeing the movie’s trailer.

But, he looses credibility when he lumps the gospel-lite storyline of “To Save a Life” (typical of the modern Youth Ministry movement) in with the strong gospel message that is portrayed in both “Facing The Giants” and “Fireproof”. Even agnostics (who pride themselves on being movie “buffs”), to which I’ve shown these two movies, say that they are well made - from a movie production quality perspective. And, again, these movies include a solid presentation of the gospel message.

Is it just me, or does the trailer to this movie make it look like Jake was living in sin, and then because of a few events he started thinking about his life and then became a moral person? I can’t say fully, because I haven’t seen the movie yet. I can say one thing though, as a former legalistic Pharisee, moralism on it’s own is no better than sin.

I saw “To Save a Life” and while I do not agree with everything the reviewer said, but the gist of what he said is right. I had the opportunity to speak with one of the representatives of the movie because I saw an advance screening and I asked him if this was a “Christian movie” in the sense of it representing the Gospel anywhere. He said, “Sure it is”. I then asked him “Where was the Gospel in the movie”. He hemmed and hawed for a couple of minutes and danced around the question. It was like a game of “Where’s Waldo”. I surmise if a life is going to really be changed it must be changed by the Gospel, otherwise it is just sheer moralism (which this movie has a heavy dose of).

This movie is really not good at all. It is a faithploitation movie that seeks to say “Look how cool we can be” and ends up very ham handed!

I enjoyed Fireproof for what it was, but this movie is not even in the same genre.