Steve Pulaski
Facing the Giants takes two of the most cliché genres of film and merges them together to make an overbearing and monotonously cliché film. It takes the faith-based, bleeding-heart Christian subtext and stuffs it underneath the rugged storytelling quips of a pigskin drama and, in turn, makes a film that will win over its core demographic and not many others. You'd think that a company like Sherwood Pictures - one that is predicated off of making films that bear bold, Christian ideas - would try to branch out and reach as many as possible, rather than practically confining their films to their core demographic, leaving others as outsiders.After a promising debut like Flywheel, I would've thought writer, actor, and director Alex Kendrick (who is also the associate pastor of the Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia) would be going for something much different than something like Facing the Giants. With Flywheel, Alex and his brother Stephen, who served as the film's co-writer, the film concerned a used car salesman who, after careful contemplation and some religious involvement, found that his dishonest business practice of overcharging consumers for his automobiles was wrong and decided to "get right with God" and run and honest dealership (which is even referenced in this film by the shot of a license plate). The film portrayed the town of Albany, Georgia in a style I found close to a documentary-like format, with the whole area looking relatively unglamorous and the acting of most involved to be quite natural and believable. It wasn't a perfect film, bearing some instances of clear, rampant oversimplification, but overall, it was a strong film with a solid idea behind it. It also appeared from that film that the Kendrick brothers were going for a low-key but intimate manner of filmmaking rather than your typical, heart-on-sleeve kind of filmmaking many of these films utilize.With Facing the Giants, naturalism and low-budget photography is traded for a cloying artificiality and antiseptic niceness in shot and direction that wasn't present with the Kendrick brothers' debut. The dialog has been modified from a more subtle, less boisterous religious interference into tedious and redundant moralizing, where every line of dialog must reference God, faith, religion, or something of the sorts. If God was watching this film, I'm sure he'd get tired of the publicity and ubiquity of his own character.The film revolves around Grant Taylor (Alex Kendrick), Shiloh Christian Academy's head coach of their football team, who has beared a losing record for the past six years. When his seventh season opens with a three game losing streak, the players' fathers grow concerned about Taylor's consistent lack of authority over the players, and how yet another losing season could cost several players their scholarships and their opportunities at larger schools. Taylor is in talks to be replaced with the academy's defensive coordinator Brady Owens (Tracy Goode), who bears a more stable record than Taylor's. To rub salt in Taylor's already rough wounds, his car is breaking down, the income between his wife and himself is just a bit over $30,000 a year, and discovers that he is infertile and is unable to conceive with his long-devoted wife.Speaking of which, a great scene comes early in the film when all of this dawns on a sleep-deprived Taylor, who is sitting awake at the dinner table after hearing the players' fathers conspire to replace him and get him ousted as Shiloh's football coach. The pressure about the failing team gets to him, his finances become overwhelming, and just the thought that God has prevented him from having children makes him completely crack and break down. While Kendrick struggles a bit with the more emotional side of acting, this is a pretty somber scene that allows the audience to really look over what Taylor has to deal with before just breaking down under the crushing weight of everything. It's sad and undoubtedly relatable to many people.Taylor decides to kick his team into high-gear, coaching them with much more rigor, pushing his players to do more and achieve more than they thought they could, and play for themselves, their parents, their coaches, but most importantly, God, who they will praise whether they win or lose. Another interesting and motivating scene comes during one day's practice, where Taylor takes the team's leader, who doesn't seem to put his effort into everything he does, and makes him perform the "death crawl" (where one person gets on their hands and feet and crawls with another person on their back - the trick is their knees cannot touch the ground) to the fifty yard line of the football field. Here, Kendrick and the student (Jason McLeod) demonstrate completely invigorating acting skills that show motivation and power. For those reasons alone, the scene is made powerful and all the more intense, even if the outcome is more or less inevitable.Based on the rather basic evaluation of two key scenes in the film, you'd think I'd be praising Facing the Giants. In fact, I truly wish I was, as the Kendrick brothers are two of the most dominant and reliable forces in the independent Christian cinema movement in terms of producing films of some sort of creative and structural quality. However, those two scenes and a solid performance or two is all Facing the Giants really has. It shows inevitably troubled characters in an inevitably trying situation until they find their inevitable faith in God in an inevitably cheesy and oversimplified way that will carry them to the inevitable conclusion that will provide inevitable cheers from the film's core audience because of its routine but "inspiring" inevitability. The audience, and the Kendrick brothers, deserve so much more than something like this.Starring: Alex Kendrick, Shannen Fields, Tracy Goode, and Jason McLeod. Directed by: Alex Kendrick.
Darian A. Caplinger
When I first heard of this movie and read reviews about how it was overly preachy, I decided to pass on it. Then I saw a brief clip from it, which contained one of the most powerful scenes I've ever seen... ever. It was because of that scene I decided to give the film a shot. I'm so thankful I did. When I first started hearing about the level of proselytizing in the film, I thought it was a joke. Watching the movie, it actually feels right... after all, it is a Christian school.The acting is actually decent. The writing is good. The storyline isn't original, but it's still believable. I connected with the characters, and found myself emotional in all the right spots. It's a film which proves you don't need foul language, sex, nudity or graphic violence in order to create an awesome movie (Hollywood should be paying attention!). I don't know what the film's budget was, but it didn't feel like a low budget flick. The film has a good soundtrack, positive humor, and a great message.If you are an atheist, you probably won't like this film. For anyone else, try to remember this is a Christian based film, produced by a Christian based group, with a heavily biblical message. It's a good film, I recommend giving it a shot.
