Courageous (2011)

I actually didn’t mind the plot of the film. I thought the story was entertaining, and even though I tend to find films that shove religion in the viewer’s face a bit corny, I thought the story was good enough to sometimes look past this. The middle portion of the film was a drag. I felt that after the horrific thing that happens to Alex Kendrick’s Adam Mitchell, the film slowed down almost to a snail's pace and focused on things that weren’t truly important to the overall story. The thing about the film that annoyed me was the fact that much of it appeared framed like a stage play. The acting in many of these scenes were subpar and I felt that these scenes were so cheesy that they were actually uncomfortable. The scenes with Robert Amaya’s Javier Martinez and Angelita Nelson’s Carmen Martinez were particularly corny and seriously reflected what one might see on stage. Their lines seemed so rehearsed that it was almost impossible to believe that anything taking place in those scenes were real. The camera angles and shots were short and choppy at times, causing certain parts of the film to seem corny and odd. The portrayal of each of the races in the film was almost comical. The whites were incredibly white, speaking “proper” English while characters like Javier Martinez spoke almost “broken” English with a thick, Hispanic, accent. On top of this, the African-Americans, with the exception of Ken Bevel’s Nathan Hayes, were thugs and drug dealers. While all of these stereotypes were a bit racist, they were, in fact, comical. A theme of this film was that of the neglectful father. This film essentially placed complete blame on the father figure for everything negative that takes place in a person’s life. While I don’t disagree that have one less parent can sometimes affect people negatively, I felt that this depiction of men was harsh and not, in the grand scheme of things, truthful. This was not a terrible film, however, these aspects of the film made it difficult to completely buy into at times.  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1630036/