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"Historical figures had long been allowed to be both Christian and honorable—it was acceptable for Richard Burton to defend the honor of God in the 1964 film of Jean Anouilh's Becket, or for Paul Scofield to take a similar stand two years later when Robert Bolt's A Man For All Seasons hit the silver screen, for example. Still, when the Chariots rolled it had been more than a decade and a half since Christians had been allowed to be Good Guys, and we were only protected from the Sprinting Scotsman and his gospel faith by decades rather than centuries. It was electric to hear this man tell his missionary sister (in what must surely be the line of dialogue most-quoted among Christian artists of a certain generation), 'God made me for China. But he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure.' The runner's pleasure in the God who made him? Yes. The Creator's pleasure in his child, and in the gift being expressed? Yes."

When Robert Duvall turned loose what may well be the most complex and passionate preacher the big screen has ever seen, moviegoers sat in a state of bewilderment and fascination. "Sonny" Dewey certainly makes an indelible impression, with his high-intensity, hand-waving, relentless, Southern-style sermons, the way he storms across the stage, the way he plays the congregation like a conductor leading an orchestra, moving from tirades to hushed meditations in a way that can only be described as musical.

But when Dewey lashes out at the man who stole his wife's heart, he has to leave the sermons behind and flee from the churchgoers who turn against him. He runs from the law, yes, but also from the fear, the grief, the pain of betrayal, and—worst of all—the realization of his heart's own unfaithfulness.

But he never tries to run from God—if anything, he turns to confront him, to challenge him for allowing such trials to befall him. His passionate tirades against God bring to mind the angry cries of King David in the Psalms. While Dewey is clearly a sinner digging himself a deeper hole, The Apostle makes it clear that Dewey knows God will rescue him from his trouble and set him on higher ground. Such faith works in his heart to convict him, to comfort him, and eventually to empower him even when the time comes to pay the consequences for his crimes.

J. Robert Parks, film critic for The Phantom Tollbooth, says, "The Apostle is one of my favorite movies of the last decade. Having grown up in a somewhat small, charismatic church, I felt like I was watching my childhood. Duvall gets it exactly right."

Darrell Manson, a critic for Hollywood Jesus, call it "one of the most sympathetic views of the holiness segment of the church, but it is balanced, showing both the [Elmer] Gantry-ism that always is in the church and the love of God that keeps the church alive and constantly being reborn."

Reed calls Dewey "O'Connor-esque … [a] deeply flawed Southern preacher whose God-haunted story illustrates another apostle's assertion that 'the gifts and calling of God are without repentance'—and that grace abounds, even to the chief of sinners."

Carl Dreyer's film about two families feuding over how to follow Christ properly is considered by many film critics—Christian and otherwise—to be one of the greatest works of cinematic art ever filmed. The father of one family struggles when one of his three sons declares that he has lost "faith in faith." The second son has devoted himself so completely to studying the Scriptures that he has gone a bit mad, wandering around in a sort of trance claiming to be Jesus himself. The third son has pledged his love to a young woman in a family whose Christianity is of a very different color.

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June (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47