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Billy and Charles Templeton (Kristopher Polaha)

I do like the scenes in which we see Graham rehearse his preaching voice, yelling and waving his arms as he steps out of the shower or walks down the hall. But when he actually preaches for the first time, things get wildly over-the-top again, as the camera rushes in on the churchgoers who clutch their Bibles and jerk their heads back as though the sheer force of Graham's voice has knocked them over.

The film is full of other head-scratchers, too. Early on in Graham's attempts to woo his Wheaton College classmate Ruth Bell (Stefanie Butler), we can hear Roy Orbison's 'In Dreams' playing in the background, presumably on the cafeteria's speakers. But wait a minute: even if this choice of song were not woefully anachronistic (the Grahams married in 1943, the song came out in 1963), would an evangelical college really have accepted secular pop music so casually back then?

And then there is the dialogue. When Templeton gives a big speech announcing his agnosticism, he uses awkward expressions like "I realize it to the center of my core"—and presumably also to the middle of his hub and the heart of his nucleus—and he says he can longer accept many of "the tenants, the fundamental tenants" of Christianity. (Presumably he meant "tenets".) And when Graham, disturbed by his colleague's professions of doubt, asks his mother (Lindsay Wagner) what to do, she replies with one of the oldest Hollywood clichés: "Listen to your heart, Billy."

Director Robby Benson works with Hammer

Without giving too much away, the film ends on a couple of awfully muddled notes, as well. Throughout the framing narrative, old Templeton—who suffered from Alzheimer's before his death in 2001—keeps telling seemingly invisible people in the hospital to "go away," and it is only at the end that we find out what he is looking at. But then he suddenly starts saying other, happier things, as if the filmmakers wanted to end on an uplifting note and they needed him to have a deathbed conversion, rather than stay bitter—the way that Salieri did at the end of Amadeus. I haven't a clue whether there is any historical basis for this last-minute change of heart for Templeton, but as drama, this sudden, unexplained shift in tone is confusing, more than anything else.

And then there is our last image of the young Graham himself. Some of the real-life Grahams have expressed concern that a film about the preacher might draw attention away from the One being preached, and the final scene—of Graham preaching and calling on his listeners to come forward and give their lives to Christ—seems like an attempt to address that concern. But there's just one catch: the preaching in question is set at the Los Angeles crusade of 1949, which is widely recognized as the point when Graham became something of a national celebrity. So after Graham calls on his audience to come forward, the film cuts to a shot from behind his back, as he stands there with his arms outstretched, and a series of flashbulbs go off. It might be going too far to say that Graham eclipses Christ in this scene, but at the very least, the main emphasis does seem to be on Graham's newfound status as the evangelistic equivalent of a rock star.

The film does have its merits. The sets and costumes do a decent job of bringing the past to life, and Hammer does a credible Graham impression, while finding some nice bits of humor in the movie's more intimate moments, especially where Billy's relationship with Ruth is concerned. But if the script isn't up to snuff, none of the other stuff matters. And this particular screenplay is nowhere close to that.

Talk About It

1. How does seeing the Billy Graham story through the eyes of an agnostic affect the way you see it? Are you drawn to his faith? Puzzled by it? Challenged by it?

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