When you check the credits of this one and see that the God's Not Dead writer/director (Harold Cronk) is involved, you expect a really preachy story of Christian Faith. This assumption here would be totally wrong. Years ago there was a dramatic film about Vietnam Vets called "Coming Home" which addressed the issues facing those veterans when they came home. It was a powerful film. This one is just a little short of it in a different dramatic story line.
This film goes into the still going Afghanistan war and updates the story adding a crisis of faith to it. This plot addresses the crisis of a widow who lost her husband in Afghanistan, and nearly lets it destroy everything she has in her life. Her focus is on what she lost and not what she still has. Despite having a lot of help being offered to her by family and friends, she nearly loses everything. It is because she can not bring herself past her husbands death.
She has a young daughter to raise alone. death. While her friends and relatives are there, and keep offering her help, she will not open up about her personal dilemma and withdraws instead. Then the broken road starts to being in pieces that can fix her problems and she ignores them at first too. For instance, it is late in the film before she finally opens the last letter her late husband wrote to her.
The characters that help her throughout are her friends and neighbors at church, her mother-in-law, a race car driver, and a garage mechanic. They help despite her not letting them into her life with her daughter, who is the most important piece of her life still left. The race car driver has his own issues to address as well. The character who reminds me of the returning vet in coming home is the wheel chair bound Afghanistan vet, who needs to share something with her, but she keeps shutting him out.
The main weakness of this story is that while the daughters grandma is there to help her grand daughter and has to deal with losing her son in the war, there is no mention of grandpa, almost like he never existed as far as I can determine. I have to guess that for some reason Grandma is widowed. Andrew W. Walker as race car driver Cody Jackson is good support for Lindsay Pulsipher as Amber Hill (and this films center is Amber). Makenzie Moss as daughter Bree Hill has a solid performance as the 4th grader. LaDainian Tomlinson debuts as Pastor Williams and his scenes are good. The films cast is all solid.
I am glad to see a film looking at the loss here at home of an Afghanistan vet, and pray that some day we will be out of this conflict. It is now the longest conflict in our history. Afghanistan became totally ignored the last 10 years, too often by a US Media more interested in creating gossip for it's own agenda, versus reporting on real events.
This film goes into the still going Afghanistan war and updates the story adding a crisis of faith to it. This plot addresses the crisis of a widow who lost her husband in Afghanistan, and nearly lets it destroy everything she has in her life. Her focus is on what she lost and not what she still has. Despite having a lot of help being offered to her by family and friends, she nearly loses everything. It is because she can not bring herself past her husbands death.
She has a young daughter to raise alone. death. While her friends and relatives are there, and keep offering her help, she will not open up about her personal dilemma and withdraws instead. Then the broken road starts to being in pieces that can fix her problems and she ignores them at first too. For instance, it is late in the film before she finally opens the last letter her late husband wrote to her.
The characters that help her throughout are her friends and neighbors at church, her mother-in-law, a race car driver, and a garage mechanic. They help despite her not letting them into her life with her daughter, who is the most important piece of her life still left. The race car driver has his own issues to address as well. The character who reminds me of the returning vet in coming home is the wheel chair bound Afghanistan vet, who needs to share something with her, but she keeps shutting him out.
The main weakness of this story is that while the daughters grandma is there to help her grand daughter and has to deal with losing her son in the war, there is no mention of grandpa, almost like he never existed as far as I can determine. I have to guess that for some reason Grandma is widowed. Andrew W. Walker as race car driver Cody Jackson is good support for Lindsay Pulsipher as Amber Hill (and this films center is Amber). Makenzie Moss as daughter Bree Hill has a solid performance as the 4th grader. LaDainian Tomlinson debuts as Pastor Williams and his scenes are good. The films cast is all solid.
I am glad to see a film looking at the loss here at home of an Afghanistan vet, and pray that some day we will be out of this conflict. It is now the longest conflict in our history. Afghanistan became totally ignored the last 10 years, too often by a US Media more interested in creating gossip for it's own agenda, versus reporting on real events.