So this is a Christian movie in a somewhat sci-fi thriller mode. We follow two main characters in two different time periods. One of them is a soldier in what seems to be a post-apocalyptic world run by an evil corporation that has outlawed religion because of its intolerance which of course means that there are roving bands of soldiers cruising the streets at all times prepared to unleash a hail of machine gun bullets on anyone who is a Christian. This soldier finds a journal written by a college student sometime in the past before everything went to **** and this journal tells a story of a false flag terror attack that the government uses as an excuse to create a program of mandatory implantation of RFID chips that every US citizen has to have in order to buy or sell . . . you know, real Mark of the Beast stuff. We jump back and forth between these stories as the soldier reads the journal in between murdering Christians.
Anyway, this movie does have a couple of strengths that elevate it above a lot of Christian movies. Having these two stories to tell and still running right at ninety minutes means that this thing moves. I mean, one of the main issues I have with Christian movies is that they just often feel incredibly padded for time, but this one has A LOT to do and so it is kind of sprinting the entire time, which covers a multitude of sins. Secondly, with a PG-13 rating, the violence is less sanitized; I mean, I’m not saying the action sequences are artfully done or anything – this ain’t John Wick. But, you know, there are gunfights a plenty and one genuinely surprising moment where the movie’s villain manipulates things to have one of his own soldiers killed by a sniper. Now the bad which all kind of hews to the standard Christian movie template: the dialogue is poorly written, the acting is mostly bad (with a couple of exceptions in minor supporting roles) and the script isn’t very well-thought through. For one thing, it’s never clear how much time has passed between the two stories; at one point, I thought it was probably several decades and then later a character from the first story shows up and he looks MAYBE five years older, but then there’s a plot development that seems to indicate that a character that is at least thirty was born AFTER the events of the flashback story, so I still have no clue. The movie does also have a very open ending to both stories, with both characters on the run, searching for the truth about their situations. So, yeah, they totally thought they were going to get a sequel to this. I would bet they had a whole trilogy planned out. Well, you can’t win ‘em all. That’s the rumor anyway. 1 star.
tl;dr – fast-paced Christian thriller can’t quite move fast enough to cover up plot problems, bad dialogue and bad acting; has energy, but that’s about all. 1 stars.