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Very well executed

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Taken from the title of that old Protestant hymn, Faith Of Our Fathers is a project of Christian actors David A.R. White and Kevin Downes. As such it has certain parameters it has to stay in. The evangelical message of it is a given.Nevertheless it does show rather well the Vietnam War experience of two men, the fathers of Downes and White. This all begins when a lot of the belongings of Downes's father are shipped to him and he gets the name of White who is the son of his father's friend in the army.Downes's father is a born again considering taking up the ministry when his service is concluded. White's father is a good old boy who hasn't really thought much on religion. Nevertheless we see in flashback how they bonded.The modern story is best, Downes and White roughly parallel their fathers and the two resolve to go to the Vietnam War Memorial to see their dad's names and pay respects. They don't do well together as traveling companions at first. Funniest part of the film is White getting in a brawl with two other rednecks at a filling station and Downes helping in the end, but not sure what to do. Basically these guys brawl because there's no other excitement in town. This is where army enlistments come from.Without the preachy religion Faith Of Our Fathers might find favor with a wider audience. But then again that's why the film was made.

This CLEAN (no sex and no nudity) movie is about a couple of guys whose fathers served in the war and now, after years passed, an adult son (John) wants to know more about his father. Consequently, he (Kevin Downes) goes to see Wayne (David A.R. White) to find out whatever he can about his dad. Wayne and John end up going on a road trip together in search of answers. There are scenes where the film goes back to their fathers in the war (NO bloody gore). Stephan Baldwin plays a man called Mansfield and I think Mansfield is their fathers' Sgt, in the war. I can see where the writers were going in this sensitive, moving, and in my opinion SAFE for the whole family. I am a true believer in Christ Jesus, so I am not going to be critical about this movie, like many hardening- hearts that gave this movie a low rating. I am a big supporter of movies written by my brothers in Christ. Note that my 23-year old son used to work at a movie theater and there are lots of children that go to the movies alone (being dropped off by their parents) so in my opinion, this movie is safe for those kids.

Christian movies sometimes get a bad rap. Now, I'm not talking about their theology. I'm talking about their quality, which has generally significantly improved in recent years. Many critics are quick to denigrate a faith-based film because of its overtly religious message, but they forget that every movie has a point of view. I believe that movies should be judged on their overall quality, not on how the person writing about the movie feels about that film's particular perspective. If a film is written, directed, acted, shot and edited well and, most importantly, if the finished product as a whole is entertaining, then that movie deserves a good review. Of course, I also believe the opposite. So, regardless of whether I personally agree or disagree with the film's message, I'm ready to practice what I preach in reviewing "Faith of Our Fathers" (PG-13, 1:45).This film tells two parallel stories that unfold 28 years apart. In Vietnam, in 1969, a squad of U.S. soldiers, including Bible-toting Christian Stephen George (Sean McGowan) and skeptic Eddie Adams (Scott Whyte), are led by battle-hardened Sergeant Mansfield (Stephen Baldwin) on a mission behind enemy lines to recover the crew of a downed aircraft. In the U.S., in 1997, Stephen's and Eddie's sons, John Paul (Kevin Downes, also the movie's co-writer), who lives in California, and Wayne (David A.R. White, another co-writer), who lives in Mississippi, meet and go in search of answers about their fathers, both of whom died in the war. (By the way, that's not a spoiler. It's the premise of the movie.) John Paul (not named after either of the two popes who used that name, but after three of the Beatles, since his last name is George) is to be married in three weeks, but his fiancée (Candace Cameron Bure) encourages him to pursue the questions raised by the discovery of his father's Vietnam War memorabilia. Starting with just a name mentioned in one of his father's letters, John Paul finds Wayne, the son of the man mentioned in the letter and travels to Mississippi to meet and talk with him.John Paul, like his father, is a clean-cut, strong Christian man. Wayne is a reclusive country boy who is more likely to shoot at an unwelcomed visitor than invite him in. The one thing both men have in common is a desire for answers about their fathers. Wayne coerces John Paul (who, naturally, he calls "Ringo") into joining him on a road trip to find their fathers' names on the Vietnam War Memorial ("The Wall") in Washington D.C. Along the way, Wayne allows John Paul (for a fee) to read Wayne's fathers' letters to see what he can learn about his own father. The personalities of the two men clash, but we witness their shared history draw them closer together, as we also see flashbacks of their fathers bond on the battlefield."Faith of Our Fathers" is a well-named film with a well-constructed story. The movie appropriately honors the sacrifices of those who have served our nation in combat, while another prominent theme is the love of fathers for their children. The two main plots each unfold logically and the editing of the film tells the story well. Unfortunately, my praise for this film ends there. Some of the decisions the characters make and some of the things that happen to them either don't make sense or feel contrived. The acting in the scenes on the road trip is unconvincing and dialog that is meant to be funny is just silly. The acting and the dialog are both a little better in the Vietnam scenes, but the scenery in those segments is decidedly low rent. There is a decent twist late in the movie that connects the two story lines, but even that plot point feels like it's only there to serve the film's not-too-subtle purpose. The Bible verses, talk of salvation and sinners prayer make it obvious that this movie was made mainly to convince casual Christians and non-believers to become born-again Christians. But regardless of whether you're up for a conversion message or not, "Faith of Our Fathers" features an engaging story, albeit one with significant deficiencies. "B-"

Last year's Fourth of July weekend saw Dinesh D'Souza's "America" gracing American cinemas with its presence, telling us American shame was a byproduct of a false idea of history and questioning where the world would be had American never come into existence. To keep with the tradition of a country that loves making films that simultaneously stroke the nation's ego as well as adhering to the importance of "traditional values," Fourth of July 2015 brings us "Faith of Our Fathers," another link in the chain of abysmal, independent Christian cinema.What makes "Faith of Our Fathers" bad isn't its flag-waving pride for America as a plea for sentimentality (it doesn't use that device as much as you'd like to believe) but it's commitment to painting the most uneven picture with caricatures for characters and circumstances so incredulous they border the line of science-fiction. We are immediately introduced to John Paul George (yes, that's the name of the character we must take seriously, played by Kevin Downes, who looks like Matt Damon's clone) and his fiancée Cynthia ("Full House"'s Candace Cameron Bure). Any time these two characters are on screen together make for a cringe-worthy bout of joking or fighting, but I digress. John Paul is digging through boxes of his late mother's old things and finds pictures and a flag from his late father's tour of duty in Vietnam. He finds the name "Eddie Adams" in the box of things and decides to look him up in hopes he has information about his father, for he knows depressingly little.After several dead-end phone calls, he stumbles upon the right man, who lives in the in the backwoods of Mississippi, and makes the effortless flight out to the land to hopefully meet the man who can tell him what happened to his father and how he died. Upon arriving, John Paul meets Wayne Adams (David A.R. White), Eddie's son, a wily, unpredictable loudmouth who allows John Paul to sleep over. John Paul is awoken in the middle of the night by the sound of Wayne chainsawing the roof off of his beloved 1965 Ford Thunderbird, with Wayne stating he'll give John Paul his own father's letters, which reveal things about his father Stephen, if he (a) pays $500 per letter and (b) takes a trip to The Vietnam Wall with him.What ensues is a terribly contrived, uninteresting bout of roadtrip clichés with shots of John Paul and Wayne's fathers fighting in combat in a group led by Sergeant Mansfield (Stephen Baldwin) interjecting this bumpy ride. The only thing worse than a roadtrip film full of clichés and narrative shortcomings is a roadtrip film that includes both and features two insufferable characters. John Paul's tired old moral soul character is about as empty as it can be and Wayne is a cloying brute who's obnoxiously fake accent and stubborn tendencies make for another character who is immediately unlikable.As with any contemporary Christian film, the elements of God and Jesus need be mentioned in nearly every scene to some degree but none can be proposed in passing or the subject of a simple, heart-to-heart conversation. "Faith of Our Fathers" has to masquerade in its religious beliefs, etching the names of God and Jesus in dreary monologues that continue to affirm the importance of these figures in a way that makes the speaking character condescend to those who do not believe in such a being. This is the fundamental flaw with most contemporary Christian films - their inability to accept that people can indeed be good and moral without the presence of a supreme being.Despite four heads (Downes, White, director Carey Scott, and Harold Uhl) working to pen the screenplay, "Faith of Our Fathers" is still burdened by bogus emotional mawkishness, the kind where somber orchestration cues you in on when to shed tears. It gets even more flashy when Si Robertson of TV's "Duck Dynasty" has to show up as the eclectic manager of a gas station, who peddles beef jerky to all of his customers. This is now the second Christian film to use the "Duck Dynasty" cast as cameos (the first being "God's Not Dead") and each time it has resulted in nothing more than sale and obvious pandering that the audiences for these films still has ostensibly not realized because they keep eating it up whenever such cameos occur.Finally, there's the film's latter act, which is so entirely unbelievable and contrived that it makes some science-fiction films seem probable. It's the kind of "unexpected" reversal that would work really well if it were even a hair realistic or believable, but by then, the film's directors and writers rely on their audience to be baited hook, line, and sinker by the emotional elements that the concluding sequences will simply seem like divine fortune that was meant to be all along. It's a cheap ploy that only worsens an already lackluster film, as we must listen to a sermon about God, his mysterious ways, and how the boys' fathers lived a life that served God and their country, set to uplifting choral music that makes for nothing but overwrought storytelling."Faith of Our Fathers" will most likely be prodded by critics but loved by its audience (choir), who will presumably call the film's detractors uptight secularists that can't appreciate a good, moral film. If my opinion on "Faith of Our Fathers" makes me that, then I'd rather be that than someone who buys into the trite on display with this film.