This movie has a few pretty well known actors so they clearly spent some money on this anti-Christian ridiculousness but perhaps they should’ve spent a little more on a good script. Is Hollywood interested in making money at all? Seriously. Treating Christians like violent wackjobs in a predominantly Christian country doesn’t seem like a good profit strategy.
I’m not showing you this trailer in order to warn you that this movie is harmful, I’m showing it to you so you can laugh at the Hollywood idiots who make this garbage.
I’m starting to think that the only Bible verse Hollywood knows is “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” Seriously, in every movie where there’s a violent Christians (wait, that’s redundant) they’re spouting that verse.
Warning: Some racy images.
May 6, 2011 at 4:10 pm
Wow, Matthew, woke up wrong side o' the bed just before penning a review of a TRAILER?
Seemed to me that the issues portrayed might just have been intended to show how complex and confounding human relationships are when "in the world," so to speak. Is being a "Christian whack job" only something we encounter in Hollywood films? (Patrick Wilson has already portrayed a tortured self-loathing fundamentalist wonderfully before in "Angels in America, btw.) Would you rather that Michael Moore or Bill Maher do a sendup of Westboro Baptist?
I dunno, dissing a film and associating that with Hollywood apostates over a trailer seems a bit premature, IMO. Out of curiosity, would you have made the same leap of judgment from the trailer for the film "True Confessions" as being hostile and antagonistic towards the RCC?
May 6, 2011 at 5:49 pm
@Charles Culbreth You obviously do not understand that there are values portrayed in the trailer that are disgusting to a believing Christian. Your wittiness displays a lack of depth.
May 6, 2011 at 5:56 pm
Beware of Christians bearing electric guitars!
May 6, 2011 at 6:36 pm
Well, that trailer leaves me with ZERO interest in seeing the film. Good grief.
May 6, 2011 at 9:05 pm
Premise – Crazy Christian controls wife. Crazy Christian stalks wife while she cheats on him. Crazy Christian will kill one or both of the adulterers to teach them about "God".
This will fail miserably.
May 6, 2011 at 10:39 pm
"…except for nonchastity" The man ought to have walked away from his life with such a non-loyal person. However, a study of the unwritten law is that if a person catches his or her spouse in an adulterous affair, that is in bed and kills them both, there is not a court in the country that will indict him for homicide. Why? Maybe because, as Marcel says, temporary insanity. "Crazy Christian controls wife". Nope. To cling to the Ten Commandments is essential. Becoming crazy means that a person has lost his faith and his trust in God.
May 6, 2011 at 10:45 pm
@Charles Culbreth. We must go to the ONE WHO knows betrayal better than you and me. Such a film without the transcendant love of God for man is sleezy at least and evil at most. Already, portraying man's suffering with out the HOPE and TRUST in God is the bottomless pit. Save your money and go buy your neighbor lunch. At least he will like you for it.
May 7, 2011 at 4:46 am
It kind of reminds me of that Julia Roberts movie that came out in the early '90s…"Sleeping With the Enemy". Only the guy is obsessed with Jesus instead of classical music and bodybuilding and Liv Tyler doesn't have to learn how to swim to get away from him…oh, and there's a ledge…other than that, it's just like it.
May 7, 2011 at 11:03 am
I'm a whack-job,
You're a whack-job,
He's a whack-job,
She's a whack-job,
Wouldn't you like to be a whack-job, too?
May 7, 2011 at 7:09 pm
@Anonymous 6:03 AM Speak for yourself
May 7, 2011 at 9:26 pm
Hey now, we don't know how the movie ends. I think it goes like this:
Crazy husband guy repents his anger and sits down for a nice, long, recommitting talk with his wife, who is now ashamed of her transgressions. They then go find unkempt adulterous guy, with whom they're reunited with the help of the cop, and they all then go to confession. The end. Yay.
This is why I don't go to movies often. I prefer my own versions.
May 8, 2011 at 12:50 am
CredoCatholic,
But wait–in _Sleeping with the Enemy_, the guy isn't just obsessed with Classical Music; he's obsessed with the Dies Irae, a Catholic hymn.
May 8, 2011 at 6:48 pm
I hope this picture loses a lot of money, and eventually the people who produce such nonsense would either a) put out something better, or b) go broke.
May 9, 2011 at 4:42 pm
am i being a "wackjob" when I say that I think it is cool that I see more and more movies in the mainstream that even acknowledge that there is a God?? Trust me…I have no intentions of watching this movie (trailer is enough), but are there any other people out there that get excited over the glimmer of hope that is creeping into Hollywood lately? Epic fail on this take……but still…at least they try
May 10, 2011 at 3:14 am
Don't forget the other standard quote for "less bad Christians" – "don't throw the first stone" !
May 10, 2011 at 10:58 pm
And ? What am I supposed to object to ?
"Stigmata" is more fun. This trailer suggests the whole film is less dull than the "Da Vinci Code", which was unforgiveably dull except for the last 20 minutes.
So what if this doesn't have Christian values ? Neither do Terminator 1, 2 & 3. Or the three Starship Troopers films. Or the Batman films, or Top Gun, or the Robocop films, or a zillion others. What they did do, was entertain, amuse, and, some of them, inspire.
If Christian values get in the way of a good story, then they have no place in it. If I want a sermon I can read one, or go to Mass. What too many people seem not to realises is that stories have to be good as stories: it's bad theology & bad philosophy to require that a feature of the content of a film should do duty for the art of making a film. It would be like saying that plot, story and character-development of a story didn't matter as long as the story was morally flawless.
A film is a story, and this story is from the look of it intended to be realistic – unlike a fantasy, say. In the world as it really is, people have affairs, they commit adultery, they think of committiong suicide, they lie, vcheat, steal & do all manner of foul things. So a realistic story can hardly be blamed if it shows them doing such things. If the story were set in a Carmelite nunnery inhabited solely by candidates for canonisation, the objection to the film might have some merit; but the trailer does not seem to be set in such a place.
The objection confuses the moral status of attutdes in the real world, with the moral status of attitudes in a fiction based on the real world. This sort of confusion leads to mistaking a crime in a fiction, with the intentions of the author of the fiction, as though a novelist whose books includes murders, is chargeable with those murders. It amounts to supposing that because a story is full of many crimes, the author must be a criminal.
This confusion underlies much criticism of the Harry Potter stories. If Christians were less obsessed with the Bible – & "obsessed" is the word – and read more widely, they would have much better understanding of stories, in both books and films.
May 10, 2011 at 11:03 pm
"They then go find unkempt adulterous guy, with whom they're reunited with the help of the cop, and they all then go to confession. The end. Yay."
Not quite: "They then go find unkempt adulterous guy, with whom they're reunited with the help of the cop, and they all then go to confession." After which they are all raptured. End of film – part II to follow in a year's time.