When a Christian movie is released into the mainstream theater, you can almost feel the collective prayers of the saints. You walk in, wondering how many people will be there, hoping it will be a great movie—or at least better than all those hokey, low-budget films we traveled half-way across the city to see while growing up. Christian movies have a reputation for being, well….not quite what most people would pay good money to go see (Christian or not). With the release of Fireproof, it’s plain that Christian Hollywood (albeit located in Albany, Georgia) has taken heed to Jesus’ message about being wise as serpents and harmless as doves.
Fireproof stars Kirk Cameron and a bunch of people that no one has heard of—yet. We know Kirk Cameron, who plays the lead (Caleb Holt). We knew him either as the big brother, or a young teen, who grew up on the TV show Growing Pains (1985-92). He was 14 when the show started—it’s hard to believe he’ll be 38 next month. His life is like a parable for the movie, because Christian movie making has gone through more growing pains that anyone would care to think about. When Kirk first appears in the movie, all anyone can think about, of course, is, “There’s Kirk. Boy, has he aged!” The Cameron distraction wears off at just the right spot, as the viewer is quickly immersed in the life of an all-too-familiar troubled marriage.
Kirk Cameron plays the prototypical good man, the strong, well-liked Fire Captain Caleb Holt, respected everywhere in the community. Enter his wife (Erin Bethea): bright, smiling, beautiful PR director in a community hospital. They live in a great home in a quiet, wooded suburb—a veritable Barbie and Ken. The perfect atmosphere is shattered just a few minutes in as we watch the couple’s first scene together at home. No missing the obvious hostility here, the bitterness, the pent-up anger. Caleb’s frustration explodes into an angry, yelling tirade, leaving wife Catherine (Bethea) in tears and wanting out of the marriage. Notably absent is the obligatory four-letter vocabulary: Hey, that’s Kirk Cameron still in your psyche, and he doesn’t swear….even when angry. The actor’s great talent makes the screaming minus swearing real. Kirk is magically left behind, and we are transported into the really ugly world of the good man Caleb who lives in a hell of his own making at home.
At about this point, the viewer might be expecting the typical Christian outcome: our hero comes to Christ, lots of others are saved, and all conflict is resolved. No. The savvy and spiritual men behind the production, brothers Alex and Stephen Kendrick (who wrote, produced, and directed), are too genuine for such fairy tale Christian endings. Despite great respect for his father, Caleb refuses to turn to the Lord, but he does agree to work on the marriage for 40 days, using a daily guide—the “Love Dare”—proffered by Dad. It is a frustrating road that he sets out upon, but one that takes us on a mostly authentic journey, one that also allows us to see the humor in the human condition, and one which realistically does not tie up every little loose end.
This is an exceptional, quality film that brings the viewer (Christian or not) to forget their concerns about whether this would be a “good Christian film.” It’s good by most standards. It’s filled with believable and compelling acting and story line, good cinematography, and well edited. If you didn’t know anything about the making of this film before you saw it, you would be absolutely shocked to find out that it was shot with one camera (believe it or don’t), that it had a budget of $150,000, that the cast was mostly volunteer, and most of these came from one Baptist church in the town of Albany, Georgia. Christian Hollywood just got a new zip code, and it has left its “growing pains” behind.
See the movie this week if you can. For more information, go to: fireproofthemovie.com.
(Written in September, 2008)
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