Post by StevePulaski on Apr 15, 2019 19:45:42 GMT -5
God Bless the Broken Road (2018)
Directed by: Harold Cronk
Directed by: Harold Cronk
Lindsay Pulsipher in God Bless the Broken Road.
Rating: ★★
Harold Cronk is a director with a lot of good intentions when it comes to making faith-based dramas. He tries to make his premises and approach as democratic as possible, looking to reach a wide audience by following characters going through realistic or even empathetic struggles of the human experience — always with faith at the core. I liked his major theatrical debut God's Not Dead more than most did, but what followed — from a sequel to the aforementioned sleeper hit to a spiritual successor to Angelina Jolie's Unbroken — was largely unremarkable, and the buck doesn't stop with God Bless the Broken Road.
Cronk commendably assures his productions have a more refined and professional look to them than the likes of many of his counterparts in Christian cinema. God Bless the Broken Road is no exception, however, that only goes so far when you have a film as saccharine and as annoyingly precious as this. The film is set in small-town Kentucky, where we see the plight of Amber Hill (Lindsay Pulsipher, True Blood), who rejoices in her happy reality of being a devoted housewife to a husband in the military. Her and her young daughter, Bree (Makenzie Moss), live beautifully as they help lead the church choir and see God's blessings in the form of their simple, satisfying slice of suburbia.
This changes when two soldiers show up during one of Amber's rehearsals to deliver the awful news: her husband was killed in combat after him and his squad were ambushed. Flash-forward two years and Amber is still recovering from her loss. She's had to get a job at a crummy diner and has neglected her church services, although Bree still remains an active member in her local congregation. Try as she might, Amber simply cannot scrape together adequate funds to keep her and her daughter afloat in the large home where they currently live. This causes great animosity between her and her ex-mother-in-law (Kim Delaney), who nags and chastises her, insisting Bree should go live with her. Amber insists she has it under control. Even her friends know that's a lie.
Amber has fallen from God, as we can tell, but luckily enough, a stock car driver named Cody Jackson (Andrew W. Walker, of Hallmark Channel fame) is spending a stint in her town, trying to remain humble in order to get his racing career back on track by slumming it in the minors, so to speak. His chiseled face, softspoken nature, and effortless connection to Bree make him the perfect person to help Amber get back on her feet — or better yet, on her knees, at the mercy of her Creator. Bree ties it all together by caring for a mustard seed, which she names Matt, and believes with all her heart that it will grow into a large tree — of course taking the popular biblical analogy and giving it life with a literal interpretation.
Inspired by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band song of the same name, which was further popularized in the modern day when Rascal Flatts covered the song in 2005, God Bless the Broken Road boasts many a familiar face. From the recognizable Pulsipher, who has made appearances on everything from Law & Order to American Horror Story, pop/R&B singer Jordin Sparks as one of Amber's closest friends, and former San Diego Chargers running back LaDainian Tomlinson as a friendly pastor, Cronk's film already assembles more marquee names than even another title released in the same year can summon. This could be why God Bless the Broken Road is not really poorly acted as much as it is poorly scripted (Cronk co-wrote the film with Jennifer Dornbush). It's a cluttered screenplay jammed with emotional platitudes and overblown, trivial metaphors straight out of the laundry basket of motivational quotes. Just because it's spoken by a bright-eyed child with a cute smile and a soft speaking voice doesn't mean it's a profound statement.
My main gripe is that God Bless the Broken Road had the potential of being at least a moderately stimulating parable about a crisis-of-faith and how well-meaning individuals can pragmatically turn away from God when faced with difficult circumstances. It's happened to more people than you might assume, and for that matter, even in a product peddled by a Christian studio (Cronk's own 10 West Studios, for that matter), it's worthy of closer examination. But the entirely distracting and frankly uninteresting plot involving Cody's driving career skews this immensely. Amber's story is rich and textured enough as a concept that not only could it have filled the film's current runtime, it could've shaved maybe 15 minutes off of an already overstuffed story. Any time the film shifts away from the heartbreak that is Amber pawning her wedding ring, relentlessly trying to keep up with the hustle of the diner, and be both the mother and father to her young, impressionable daughter to watch Cody, who has the personality of a mannequin at times, try to rejuvenate his own career, it reminds you how nearly every film of this genre has to pack a miniseries worth of problems and characters into a sub-two hour affair.
To reiterate, Philip Roy's cinematography is quite good, but it still has that overly sunny, heavily fabricated look where everything looks impossibly bright. Not to mention, the music choices only emphasize what should naturally be felt in a story like this, instead producing the opposite reaction of eye-rolls as the film tries to double-down on the emotions it should elegantly inspire. Cronk's efforts to bring a faith angle to stories of domestic and public conflict is one I'd absolutely be a proponent of, but by now, it's clear that there is an inability to separate proselytizing from producing and screenwriting, and I don't believe, at least for him, it's a union one that's going to see a divorce any time soon.
Starring: Lindsay Pulsipher, Andrew W. Walker, Makenzie Moss, Kim Delaney, Jordin Sparks, and LaDainian Tomlinson. Directed by: Harold Cronk.