Friday, September 30, 2016

My Experience With… The Last Appeal.

Yeah......... didn't post anything last week. It was... kinda crazy for me (I don't even know how to eloquently explain half of it), and I meant to post this last week, but I forgot. Anyway....

Over the past couple of years, I’ve learned to appreciate Christian films. Sure, they’re not as flashy or as elegant as mainstream movies, and I don’t have anything against them, either. It’s just that, well, some of them can actually be really good, in spite of their obvious Christian tones and B-list-ness.

Yes, that’s a word I made up.

Anyway, one such movie was The Last Appeal.


Ever watch a movie and think, “Um… am I watching a movie or a theatrical production?” or, “Am I at the theater or the theatre?


Yes, I brought back that gif.
I spent way too much time
timing it just to use it once.

Well, I get the feeling a playwright wrote it, and a theatre director staged it. Oh, and I’m almost certain the actors are part of a theatrical traveling troupe, but that’s being waaaaay too nit-picky to consider it as a real flaw.

This movie starts out in a back alleyway where a drug deal is taking place between a drug lord and a crooked cop. Right in the middle of it, a man with a gun shows up out of nowhere demanding the money just handed to the drug lord. It turns out that drug lord owed random man the money or something. In any case, a cop shows up out of nowhere (seriously, doesn’t this sound like an intro to Law and Order or something?) demanding everyone put their weapons down. Crooked cop actually made the setup without anticipating the other guy arriving.

After a verbal battle that goes on way longer than it would’ve gone in real life, random man shoots the second cop (named Ivan) on the spot and escapes. The drug lord disappears, too, not to be seen again in the film. The one shot kills the second cop, and the man (named Titus) ends up on death row.

The film cuts ahead one year and shows Ivan’s widow, Trisha, on the computer. Her friend Katherine tries to get her hopes up to no avail. She even points out the fact that Trisha has stopped playing the piano, which is very odd behavior for a professional concert pianist. Still, nothing.

In the death row cells, there are five inmates. The first is Curtis, a tattooed White Supremacist. The second is Randy, a man trying to prove his innocence, in spite of his dwindling hope. Titus is in the middle, and he tries and tries daily to get the governor to lower his sentence to life in prison. The fourth is Clayton, a war veteran and former drug dealer who got saved in prison (and is trying his hardest to get the other inmates saved). The last one is Doc, another veteran, but has PTSD and does not talk.

The Last Appeal takes a small but powerful journey for each of these six individuals, based on faith and knowing when to give your life to God. Oh, and it has a HEAVY Gospel message in there. FOUR TIMES and FOUR WAYS (at least) the Gospel is presented. Oh, no, this isn’t playing around with Christianity, this is dealing with life and death.

I DARE NOT SAY WHAT HAPPENED TO TITUS, but I will say that I could not hold it together. Man, I wasn’t ready for the ending. I hadn’t cried that much due to a movie since Rigoletto! It does have a very dark, heavy tone, but what would you expect from a movie about death row? I don’t care who you are, where you are, or who you worship, just watch it at least once. 5/5 Stars.



What’s your favorite sad movie?

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