This is sort of a persecution movie, and the main character's name is Joe. This is about Joe Kennedy, a high school football coach, who was fired for praying on the field, and then the case went to the Supreme Court.
Normally, when I see these, it's practically science fiction, like in Disciples in the Moonlight, where the Bible has been outlawed. But because this one is such a straightforward story, they do a lot of editing tricks and writing punch-ups to make it more interesting.
In that it's actually kind of a comedy.
It frequently breaks the fourth wall, and has a lot of talking head moments like I'm watching modern family. There's a part where Joe is in basic training, where the drill sergeant is like a PG-arly army, but it was a little funny when he started screaming at Joe for breaking the fourth wall and talking to the audience.
In fact, there's a lot of this movie that's a little weird. The storytelling is fresh for one of these, but the tones do clash with each other. There's a flashback on a battlefield where it gets metta with a camera crew and a green screen, but then the scene itself is supposed to be serious. Or a part where his wife is sick, and she says, I'm fine. Then he looks at the camera and says, she wasn't fine. Like, is this serious or is it arrested development now?
Some lapses I observed...
I did observe some laziness though. In the 80s and 90s scenes, they have young actors playing them, but from 2000 on, they always look like this for two decades. They never change. Not their hair or anything.This man is supposed to be in his early 30s in some scenes. It feels like this is taking place over the course of just a year, not well over 15. They also mention that they have kids, but I'll take their word for it. The kids are never in the movie.
Moving on to the brighter sides...
I do like what they do with the Amy-Acker character. They don't just write her as you go, Joe, and nothing more. No, she's a fleshed-out character, and it shows how Joe's case is seriously affecting her job and even taking a toll on their marriage.
Joe, on the other hand, is written like parody in an early hearing. His narration says, "turns out court cases are nothing like law and order. I just sit there all day and the prosecutor was being mean to me." But the best part is when he's having coffee with an atheist, and the atheist says, "actually, you're just like Peter." And Joe says, "who?" And the atheist says, "the Apostle Peter?" Joe says, sorry, "I'm not much of a biblical scholar," (like you need to be a scholar to know who Peter is).
The atheist breaks it down for him by saying, "Imagine Jesus is Batman. Peter is like his Robin." It's a court case movie that's really anti-climactic. The Supreme Court hearings were during COVID restrictions, so there's no big court speech in it. The climax is that they're sitting near their phones, and then they get their alert like, "oh hey, the verdict came in."
Then they bring in Willie Robertson from Duck Dynasty to talk to the camera and say, "now here's your mystery about these dang old court cases."
So it's faith-based Adam McKay in the last five minutes. But I'll give it this. It's means of storytelling and the comedy aspect made the pacing a lot better. It wasn't a boring film, and by the end I was like, "oh, it's over already."
My rating on the movie
The acting is fine, and the movie is better than a lot of others in this genre, specifically running the bases, which pretty much has the exact same plot. But it's still got a lot of problems, and I can't say it's worth seeing in theaters. It's a C-plus. Low expectations bumped it up a little. At least this one was slightly ambitious.