4/10

Twelve strangers lives collide in this film about finding your faith, and representing it with honor. “Do You Believe” is the latest religious big screen release. It tells the story of a dozen different souls all moving in different directions, and longing for something more. As their lives unexpectedly intersect, they each are about to discover there is power in the belief and the Cross of Christ even if they don’t believe it yet. When a local pastor (Ted Mcginley) is shaken to the core by the visible faith of an old street-corner preacher (Delroy Lindo), he is reminded that true belief always requires action. His response ignites a faith fueled sermon that powerfully impacts everyone it touches in ways that only God could orchestrate. This is the fourth religion fueled film i have seen in the last 10 months, and i can safely say that it is the best of the ones i have seen. It’s not particularly a good film, being that it’s got a lot of storytelling problems, and writes outsiders of faith a little wooden at times. But “Do You Believe” doesn’t have anything deeply wrong with it, and actually compiles some well written characters. The movie doesn’t get as cynical as some of it’s predecessors, but the twenty minute finale does push the ridiculous button to alert people that it’s still there. The cast is deep with long time Hollywood veterans like Sean Astin, Mira Sorvino, and Lee Majors. Majors in particular, was my favorite character in the movie. There’s a lot of eye winking charm that comes with his on screen marriage to Cybil Sheppard as two people who have grumpily lived with each other for too long. Some of the characters are similar in actions, and have the same backstories as other films, so i felt this movie would’ve been better off cutting half of those people to make more screen time for the characters whose stories are more than just a one note exposition. The movie’s run time of one hour and fifty five minutes is a little long, but we only feel it in the effect of each of the twelve characters being equally balanced with camera time. Once each character has had about ten minutes of screen time, the movie feels like it should nearly be over, and that’s because too many back story liberties are taken from Director Jonathan Gunn. As his first feature film, it’s clear that Gunn has a knack for above average camera work, but he just doesn’t know how to cut to the point. The movie’s finale feels completely different from anything we experienced up to this point. There is a huge seven car wreck on a bridge that brings all of our characters conveniently together. It’s logic feels like a plot to a bad joke told between two kids that starts with “A priest, a soldier, and a thief are on a bridge……”. The cars wreck into each other one after another with at least ten seconds between each wreck. Do this many people have no idea how to use a brake pedal? Were you not paying attention to the halting of the cars which gave you more than enough time to stop? Our survivors are transported to a hospital where athiest Dr Ferrell (Sean Astin) works. Astin is made a fool of due to a cancer patient dying and then coming back to life without even a trace of cancer. If this isn’t enough, Astin’s girlfriend leaves him because he is an athiest. Which seven year old in Sunday school wrote this? That is my biggest problem with these religious films; they are too degrading to anyone who doesn’t respect their beliefs. Every character is always written as a complete jerk. I myself do believe in God, but i never push my beliefs on anyone. I also have a lot of athiest friends who guess what? Don’t feel offended even in the slightest about our beliefs. It’s a far cry from the villains that these kind of movies paint. Overall, “Do You Believe” isn’t a good film by any stretch, but it’s the one i would recommend if i had to. In addition to a good cast and steadily shot camera angles, the film has a lot of humor that pushes the film a lot further than it’s dry competitors. If the question is “Do i believe these films will ever pull a positive review out of me?” The Film Freak’s eight ball would say “Not likely”.