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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