What
happens when our postmodern society arbitrarily decides that
declaring any one worldview to be true over all the others should be
illegal? You get Persecuted.
Directed
by Daniel Lusko, this American political Christian action thriller is
set in a modern America where the freedom of speech is beginning to
be taken away, starting first with religious speech. Many people who
have already reviewed this movie in the national media claim that the
situation this movie illustrates will never come to be, but anybody
who has been paying close attention to the news the past couple of
years will know that similar things have already happened over seas
and in Canada, and are beginning to happen in the USA right now (read
Matt Walsh's If you want to prove you don’t hate gays, all you have to do is worship at their feet
if you don't believe it).
Nationally
acclaimed evangelist John Luther (James Remar), who is the last
obstacle in the way of the Faith and Fairness Bill being passed, is
framed for the murder of an innocent teenage girl. Luther finds
himself on the run from a team of ex-military operatives who wage a
relentless campaign to eliminate the incriminating evidence of their
frame-up of Luther. As an evangelist-turned-fugitive, and with
encouragement from his catholic priest father (Fred Thompson), Luther
vows to expose anyone involved with or profiting from the murder of
the girl.
The
Faith and Fairness Bill presented in the film is a piece of
legislation that says that you have to give equal time and
opportunity to other worldviews (Whether it be Hinduism, Buddhism,
Islam, Judaism, Christianity, agnosticism, or Atheism), and you have
to say that all worldviews are equally true. On its face, this seems
like a good piece of legislation because it fits right in with our
postmodern culture that rejects the idea that there is an objective
reality that we must all conform to. However, in order to understand
the implications of such a law, we have to look at what
Jesus taught about this subject.
John
14:6-7: “Jesus
answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to
the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know
my
Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.'”
As
we can see, Jesus taught that he was the truth. By default, that
would mean that all other religions and worldviews are wrong. The
Faith and Fairness Bill, if it was passed, would legally define
Jesus' teaching in John 14:6-7 as hate speech, and make it a crime
punishable by imprisonment. You essentially would have the same type
of persecution that the first-century Christians faced from the
Romans, just in a slightly different form. Naturally, this law would
apply to several other religions, but since this movie is done from
the Christian perspective, we won't go into that.
While
the special effects in Persecuted are minimal, the movie's
dark and realistic tone is comparable to the Taken movies.
The action sequences were very realistic, as the secret service and
FBI agents were portrayed as being brutally efficient at their jobs
as they are in real life. As action-packed as Persecuted was,
the thing that impressed me most was the fact that Lusko was able to
create a compelling action film where the main character fired only
one bullet and killed only one bad guy in the entire movie. The
dialogue between the characters in the movie felt believable and had
none of the cheesiness that Christian movies used to have when I was
growing up.
One
of the more interesting things about the movie was the way that
Luther's ministry partners were characterized: A bunch of men who
were more interested in making money and appeasing the demands of man
than appeasing the God they claimed to serve. There is a powerful
scene in the ministry's boardroom where Luther rips into them for
their greed, and for compromising with a government that ultimately
wants to silence them. Unfortunately, as the end of the movie
indicates, Luther's rousing rebuke seems to have fallen on deaf ears
and hearts.
As
compelling as the movie's main plot is, there are several holes in
it. First off, Pastor Ryan Morris' (christian comedian Brad Stine)
relationship with Luther's wife Monica (Natalie Grant) is never fully
explained. There is a scene where government agents are sent to kill
Luther's father and retrieve the flash drive containing the video
footage proving Luther's innocence; the problem is that it's never
explained how they knew that Luther's father had the flash drive.
It's later revealed that the real reason the Faith and Fairness Bill
was enacted was to better enable the government to go after Middle Eastern terrorists, but it was never explained how enacting the bill
made that possible. Also, without spoiling the ending completely, I
will say that the movie ends about five minutes too early.
Holes
in the plot aside, if you're looking for a dark and realistic
Christian action thriller with a largely compelling story and
believable characters, then Persecuted is
the movie for you.
