If you just can’t wait for that first Republican primary debate to get some vague talking points about duty, honor and the healing power of Christ’s love inarticulately blurted in your face, have I got the movie for you! PureFlix Entertainment, the Arizona-based purveyor of (per their subscription-based streaming website) “faith and family movies” that hit big with God’s Not Dead, has followed up the recent Old Fashioned and Do You Believe? with their worst movie yet. At least the others had ludicrous storylines worthy of ridicule. This one is just plain boring.
It’s 1997, and California-based nice guy John Paul George (Kevin Downes) is readying to marry his longtime girlfriend whose sole ambition in life is the preparation of home-cooked meals. John Paul’s mother recently passed and, going though her things, he uncovers photographs of the father he never knew, who died in Vietnam. You’d think this would be a time for reflection about his mother, what with her newly dead, but women don’t really factor into this story too much, other than to nag about choosing floral arrangements. John Paul decides that now, right now, he should finally look into his father’s past. Newly uncovered notes show he had a best friend in ’Nam named Eddie Adams – maybe he has some clues.
A pause here, because, yes, you read that right. Eddie Adams is, of course, the name of the war photographer best known for snapping the photo of US-backed South Vietnamese police chief Nguyễn Ngọc Loan summarily executing prisoner Nguyễn Văn Lém. Either there’s a subversive mole deep inside PureFlix’s story department or this is just a glorious coincidence. John Paul George, a devout Christian, would naturally call it a miracle, as would, by the end of this picture, Adams’s son Wayne (David AR White), the Yosemite Sam-esque cuss that John Paul eventually leads to a path of Godliness.
The bulk of the film follows John Paul, who races to Mississippi to meet his late father’s friend’s son. They enter into an agreement to visit the Vietnam memorial in Washington, DC. Wayne, the type of feller that’ll start a fight at a gas station if someone calls his vehicle “feminine”, has illuminating letters from his father Eddie about John Paul’s father Steven that he dishes out, for pay, during their ride. The epistolary nature offers a parallel storyline, as the two generations of men meet their fate.
The fathers wallow in the Indochinese mud, aware that their next mission is a dangerous one. Steven, nose in his Bible, slowly convinces elder Adams that Jesus is the Way. It really just takes a few entry-level bullet points like “he died for you” and “you’ll live with him in Paradise” to seal the deal. At no point do the two men question why they are on foreign soil killing people that had the audacity to try and change their economic system.
The 1997 storyline is a tad lighter, involving sleeping out under the stars and getting their car stolen. We finally learn why Wayne is such a bad seed. As a young man, en route to the very same DC monument with his mother, she was killed by a drunk driver. Panicked, he left the scene, then robbed a gas station due to confusion and hunger. This improbable state of affairs led to a life on the fringes. Luckily, the burnt-out car is still there on the highway 15 years later, a readymade prop for his moment of catharsis.
Far be it from me to try and divine the goals of PureFlix Entertainment, but are they content to simply chum their own waters, or are they looking to cast the net wider and bring in new recruits? If the task is to proselytize, they are doing a wretched job with these cheap, risible movies. The acting is atrocious, the dialogue a disgrace and the props look like they were designed by a conscripted middle-school drama club. The funniest bit is the appearance of the one “star”, Stephen Baldwin, as the tough Vietnam sergeant who turns up in 1997 to save the day. (He interrupts a replay of a gas-station holdup, the aged proprietor pleading: “This is my store, not a company franchise!”) The fathers’ bravery in combat brought Baldwin’s character to Jesus and now, two decades later (made evident by greyed hair that looks like someone sprinkled a powdered donut over his head), he’s here to stand in front of an American flag (really) and talk about accepting Jesus Christ as your personal lord and saviour.
Redemption and forgiveness is delivered, as are the keys to a two-seater motorcycle. The pair make it to the memorial. You never find out which floral arrangement is purchased for the wedding.
