The Apostle

Year: 1997 Rating: PG-13 Overall Evaluation: 6.0 Significance Suppositions Story Style 2.5 / 10 10.0 / 10 7.0 / 10 10.0 / 10 Click HERE for evaluation criteria.

Style

Rated PG-13 for thematic elements and a related scene of violence. Certainly nothing objectionable or inappropriate.

Story

The story involves a Pentecostal holiness preacher ("Sonny", later "the Apostle E.F.") who discovers that his wife is cheating on him with his church's youth pastor. Sonny himself is an admitted womanizer as well as a drinker, and it is clear that the marriage is in pretty bad shape by the time this happens. He seriously injures the youth pastor when he finds out, and runs from the law to a small town where he immediately begins a new ministry. The rest of the film concerns his creation of this ministry and dealing with his past.

Suppositions

Having worked with folks involved in the so-called "holiness" movement and having visited some of the services I can honestly say that this is the most realistic film on this subject that I have ever seen, probably the most accurate that has ever been made. Robert Duvall (who plays Sonny, and who wrote, produced, and financed the film) absolutely nailed his role, and even used real preachers and real sermons throughout the movie. I think this is the real value of the film - it is an accurate portrayal of what can happen when one's "spiritual" life is so separated from his "secular" life that one does not affect the other. The film demonstrates that people caught up in the emotionalism of hyper-charismatic movements are often very good at separating what they supposedly believe from their daily lives. I have personally known folks like this - they go to church on Sunday, carry their Bibles around, and say "glory hallelujah" every five minutes, but do not hesitate to shack up with their "significant others," go out drinking, or get divorced when it "just doesn't work out." This is what happens when your brain disconnects from your adrenal gland - "spirituality" becomes a big gush-fest and one's "relation with God" has no bearing on their daily lives, it is simply a feeling one gets when "having church."

Further, the gospel is presented accurately many times and yet the film lacks the propaganda feel of most "Christian" movies that focus solely on that aspect and not on little things like quality.

Significance

Most of the reviews I have read go on and on about how wonderful it is that a Hollywood movie (it's not, actually) is finally depicting a Christian in a non-Hollywood way. This is somewhat true: the film does not make fun of Christians and it succeeds in showing them as fairly regular humans. Many Christian reviewers have lauded the fact that although the preacher was shown as struggling with sin, there was repentance and grace as well. Sorry, but this is not the case. Sonny starts off the movie as a womanizer and ends as a womanizer. He freely admits that he is a sinner but lifts not one finger to change that. He is not shown struggling in any way with this issue throughout the film -in fact, in one scene he even drives a woman home from church and without missing a step invites himself in to spend the night with her - despite the fact that he was still married and so was she. There is no "struggle" and no repentance in this character arc. And this is not Sonny's only issue . . . he is a murderer on the run from the law!

{SPOILER WARNING}

At the end of the film he does get caught and goes peacefully, but he does not turn himself in as a "repentant man" would have. When he is arrested there is no hint of sorrow over his act of murder, only that he won't get to preach in his church anymore.

The movement from Act 1 to Act 2 is basically him running from justice, self-righteously declaring himself to be "an apostle" (even going so far as to baptize himself!) - supposedly leaving his "old life" behind only to repeat the exact sins that got him in the position he was in! He continues his womanizing and never really says anything about his sin. This is hardly repentance!

This movie could have been just about perfect if it had not gone the route of "sincerity equals goodness." The message seems to be something like this: "We all struggle with evil, but we can be good people anyway if we are sincere." This is false. For one, we are not good - at best we are sinners saved by grace. Second, there was no struggle with evil in this movie - only some sorrow over the results. Sorrow does not equal repentance. The fact that this man likes to preach and get people saved does not disqualify him from righteous standards. Yes, we all sin. Yes, we're all imperfect. But this fact far from justifies ongoing sin as a way of life and thinking one can get away with it because he is "holy ghost filled," or "sincere in his beliefs." If stated beliefs are not manifested in real life then they are not examples of biblical faith, and thus, neither was this movie (although it purported to be and thus can be judged on those standards).