| Overall Grade: |
B |
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| Story: |
A- |
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| Acting: |
B+ |
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| Direction: |
B |
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| Visuals: |
B |
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Flawed yet entertaining film with an amazing story
by Cleetus (movies profile)
Apr 29, 2008
726
of
762 people found this review helpful
In the realm of Christian movies, even casual movie watchers such as myself tend to cringe when hearing about the next film that will attempt to tell a story with Christian themes.
Left Behind, anyone? Yeah me neither.
Thankfully End of the Spear is no Left Behind. The acting is believable, the story is powerful, and one can actually feel like they connected with the movie long after the credits go up.
Back in the 1950's, 5 missionaries wanted nothing less than to go and spread the message of the Gospel to some notoriously violent natives who had never heard it before. Their tragic end spurs the sister of one slain missionary and the husband of another to go and live among the violent Waodani natives (who had a homicide rate of over 50% within the tribe).
After the women lived with the natives for some time and kept sharing their faith, many natives turn from their violent ways and adopt a more fulfilling lifestyle while embracing that Jesus Christ is the Messiah.
The main reason why End of the Spear made it into so many theaters is because the Christian themes are downplayed, yet noticeable enough for anyone to see.
Some of the biggest flaws that I noticed;
-- lack of character development among the women and young son of a slain missionary.
-- the soundtrack, while nothing unpleasant to hear, did seem to be a bit over the top in terms of how often it played throughout the scenes. I felt that there needed to be more variety. It does add to the urgent overall tone of the movie, however.
-- at the end during a funeral scene, supposedly 40 years after the main events, it looked like NONE OF THE CHARACTERS had even aged! (except Chad Allen's character, who plays both a missionary and the aged son of that missionary)
But while watching a behind the scenes documentary I learned that the actual people the movie is based on were there in the funeral scene, so in one sense they did age. Just not the actors who played them.
oh well.
These are my main constructive criticisms, and they are not enough to warrant an overall negative rating.
Forgiveness is a central theme, and a refreshing one to see since most of the time all that we see in movies is revenge revenge revenge.
(another movie to see about forgiveness is To End All Wars starring Keifer Sutherland and Robert Carlisle. It depicts Allied prisoners being brutally mistreated by their Japanese captors in World War 2 and coming to terms with what forgiveness truly means. While not as Christian-themed as this one, it really makes you think)
If End of the Spear is any indication, then it won't be long before Christians can look forward to movies that rival the quality of Hollywood and the finest Independent films out there.
7/10 |
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