Breakthrough Review

Happy Easter everyone! OK, fine, I'm two weeks late on that. But I have been meaning to see this year's Easter movie, "Breakthrough," since it came out on April 17. On that actual holiday of Easter, I went on a bit of a run with a couple small Christian movies on Netflix that I had missed. I enjoyed "The Case for Christ," but didn't enjoy "An Interview with God." So now with both of those under my belt, I felt it would be fitting to top it off with "Breakthrough." Generally I do get hesitant with Christian films coming to theaters because there's a lot of them that aren't handled very well. They can be very polarizing or antagonistic. Preachy can also be another good word. And it's difficult to determine which ones are going to be good and which ones are worth skipping. Most critics will hate anything to do with Christ or God, but yet Christian moviegoers will be the exact opposite and declare anything to do with Christ or God as the best movie ever made, regardless of filmmaking quality. I like to act as a mediator between the two audiences. I do like a good, positive, faith-based movie, but I also like a well-made film with good acting, good character arcs and good story telling. I feel like there's a sweet spot that can be found between the two, so I like searching for those.

When it comes to "Breakthrough," I was fairly confident that this was going to be one of those Christian films that did work. For one, this didn't come from one of those smaller Christian studios like Pure Flix or the Kendrick Brothers movies. This was a movie that came from Fox. And the Christian movies that come from the bigger studios are usually the ones that are higher quality. "I Can Only Imagine" came from Roadside Attractions, which put out "Manchester by the Sea." "The Shack" came from Lionsgate. Sony, via their TriStar label, put out both "Miracles from Heaven" and "Heaven is for Real." Sony via their main label also put out "Risen." And Fox themselves have released "Son of God" and the third "Chronicles of Narnia" movie (the first two were Disney, meaning all three of them are now under the Disney label). Speaking of "Miracles from Heaven," DeVon Franklin, the producer from that movie, was also the main producer for "Breakthrough." So the signs for this pointed towards it being good. For fans of "This is Us," the main star of this movie is Chrissy Metz, who plays Kate Pearson. For a deeper cut, the director of "Breakthrough," Roxann Dawson, directed the episode "The Last Seven Weeks" of "This is Us" back in January.

In regards to this being a movie from Fox, that now means that this is a movie under the Disney banner. In fact, this is the first Fox movie released by Disney since the purchase became official. This made me curious as to which studio's name would be displayed at the beginning of the movie. Maybe this was a dumb question that only I was curious about, but it was 20th Century Fox at the beginning of the movie. No signs of Disney anywhere. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. We don't see the Disney logo at the beginning of a movie from Marvel or Lucasfilm, either. So we can probably expect the Fox logo to keep showing up for the movies that originally belonged to Fox. Anyways, past that silly question and onto the movie, if you haven't seen any of the trailers for this movie and my review makes you curious to go see it, I would do your best to avoid said trailers. It's one of those situations where the trailers are a summary of the movie rather than a tease for what's going to happen. And that annoys me. But maybe I'm a hypocrite in this situation because I'm going to be talking openly about what happens. This is a movie that's less about the surprise of what's going to happen and more about the journey the characters go on, so I don't feel too bad being a bit more open.

Regarding that plot, this is a movie about a teenage kid who is out goofing around with his friends on the frozen lake when the ice breaks and all three of them fall into the freezing cold water. The two friends manage to escape, but our main kid gets trapped underwater for 15 minutes before Luke Cage comes and saves his life. I mean, Mike Coulter from "Luke Cage." The kid is rushed to the hospital where they try to save his life, but he remains without a pulse for a total of 45 minutes after being rescued. The doctors at the hospital decide to give up because they don't think there's anything they can do, so they decide to give the room to his mother, played by Chrissy Metz from "This is Us" so she can say goodbye. But in the midst of her praying in the room, his pulse miraculously comes back and he's flown to a new hospital to be treated by a specialist. This here is all in the first act of the movie, so no spoilers there. But the rest of the movie is them hanging out in the hospital as the kid fights for his life. Most of the drama comes through the various reactions of everyone close to him as everyone has a different opinion on whether or not he's going to survive, thus we have a lot of rising tension and fragile emotions colliding that felt all too real for situations like this.

I say they feel all too real because I know what it feels like to get that call that someone in your immediate family has suffered some sort of severe accident and is in the hospital. That sucks. And that hospital waiting room is probably the worst place on the planet because the anticipation or the uncertainty of what's going to happen is absolutely awful. Everyone has a different way of approaching things when no one knows if everything is going to be alright. You have the people who seem blindly optimistic and are unwilling to even think of the idea that the person is going to die. Then you have the people who feel it's important to be prepared for the worst possible outcome. And when you have two of those people in the same room together, emotions clash and things get rough. If you're on the outside looking in, it's easy to tell people how they should react and what they should say, but in the heat of the moment when emotions are very raw, more often than not your emotions get the best of you and you do and say things that you might later come to regret. These are the moments that this movie captured the best. The movie is essentially a hospital waiting room drama and on that aspect of it, all of the actors involved do a great job at capturing this.

Major props here has to go to Chrissy Metz for nailing her role as the mother. I haven't seen any of "This is Us," I hear I need to, but fans of the show are certainly going to be happy because she shines here. Even though the kid, played by Marcel Ruiz, is laying on a hospital bed unconscious for most of the movie, the setup between him and his mother at the beginning is worth being invested in. He's in a bit of a rough spot as a teenager because he doesn't have a sense of belonging. He was adopted at a young age and struggles with the feeling of not knowing where he belongs. Chrissy Metz as his adopted mom is doing her best to try to connect with him, but struggles with the idea that she's having no luck. I mean, such is the case with raising teenagers. And that all makes him falling through the ice really tragic because there wasn't a sense of finality to that relationship and the mother can't fathom the idea of what might happen if he doesn't survive, so she's the one who refuses to accept the alternative and gets mad at everyone, doctors included, for even thinking negative thoughts. He's going to survive. And although some of her choices and actions are a bit illogical, they make perfect sense in context of someone who is facing the possibility of losing a child.

Then we have solid work from the supporting cast around her. Josh Lucas as her husband is not quite in the same position as her. He can't stand the idea of seeing his son unconscious, so he chooses to spend his time in the waiting room instead of in the hospital room. And he also feels uncomfortable when his wife starts getting mad at everyone in the room. He also becomes a bit upset at her when she puts her own health at risk as a diabetic because she refuses to go home to get her insulin or even go to sleep at night. The tension there between the two of them feels very honest. Then we have the addition of Topher Grace as Pastor Jason. He's a very different pastor than you would expect and he's actually not very likable at the beginning, but his commitment to doing the best to help them makes his character grow on you throughout the movie. Together the three of them form a really strong bond through these hardships. Thus even though the movie is one of the more predictable movies, regardless of if you've seen all the trailers or not, the character growth here makes the experience worthwhile and is the exact reason why some critics have gravitated towards a more positive response even though they usually trash on all of the Christian films.

As I was sitting there, though, I could help but have a lot of other emotions swirl through my mind. I think what often can be detrimental to even the most well-intentioned Christian films is the heavy focus on the big miracles. This might be a strange thing to say, but stick with me. Yeah, it can be nice to watch a feel-good movie about someone who beat all odds. Yeah, there are things that can be learned by the idea that God is a God of miracles and does perform the big miracles today. It feels rather morbid of me to say this, but I was kinda thinking that this movie might be a more effective movie if the kid died. I mean, imagine that. He falls through the ice. He's miraculously found by Luke Cage. He doesn't have a pulse for a total of an hour. He stays in the hospital, fighting for a week. The whole city is praying for him. But he still dies. The big miracle doesn't happen. That's not how this movie goes, but I think there's more room for teaching there. Can you still have faith in God when it seems like he didn't answer your prayers? Or, better yet, answered them by saying no or that he has a different plan? Those types of situations are the ones where people's faith often struggle the most. Life doesn't seem fair and because of that it doesn't seem like God actually exists. What do you say when those questions are asked?

I bring that up because in my situation that I referenced earlier where I got a call in the middle of the night about a family member in a dire situation, we did come together as a family, we did ask for prayers from all of our friends and neighbors, but things didn't go the way we wanted. I also had a really good friend who got diagnosed with cancer. If there was anyone on Earth who deserved to live and survive, it was him. But despite a valiant fight over many years, he didn't survive. Those are far from the only funerals I've been to in my life, but those are the two that I was thinking of during this movie. Funerals are events that I both hate and love. I hate them because it means that someone I cared about has passed on, but I love them because it provides a lot of great teaching moments. Everyone attending is heartbroken and vulnerable, thus they are very teachable. Thus instead of a Christian movie finding a story of someone who survived in a miraculous, I would love to see a Christian movie where the big miracle everyone was praying for didn't happen because I think that would be a rather powerful film that teaches people how to keep the faith despite despite life not going the way they think. That could actually be more relevant to a wider range of people.

In this movie's fairness, it does try to address that. There's some discussion at the end regarding why some people die and why others are saved from death, but they don't really give a strong answer for that. Granted, that's a hard question to answer, but the main focus of this movie was on the miraculous event that took place rather than the question of why others weren't saved when he was. But even so, I really appreciated some of the conclusions that the mother did come to. The overall message of the movie is to accept the will of God, whatever that might be. We need to allow him to help us. Said message is driven him by the performance of the song "Oceans (Where Feet May Fail)" by Hillsong UNITED. There's a crowd of people that come sing the song outside the hospital room. If you ever want to completely wreck me in a Christian film, play that song. It'll get me every time. "Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders; Let me walk upon the waters wherever you would call me; Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander; And my faith will be made stronger in the presence of my Savior." It's an absolutely beautiful song that's ultimately the message of the movie. When we can't stand on our own, we need to turn to God to let him help us stand.

Some of the other movies I mentioned are ultimately more effective than this movie. The movie "The Shack" is a movie where the father's daughter is kidnapped and killed. Even though some of the specific events that happen afterwards are a bit odd, he is ultimately asked by a person representing God to forgive the killer. That was a powerful message. Also, the movie "Miracles from Heaven" was ultimately another movie about a big medical miracle where someone survived when they logically shouldn't have. However, the word in the title is plural. MIRACLES. Because the movie was more than a movie about one big miracle. The movie asked us to remember all the small miracles that happen around us everyday that we are often ignoring because we're always seeking for the big miracle. That was another powerful message. But still, "Breakthrough" is a solidly effective Christian movie with an excellent cast who all do a good job of making us invested in the characters and care about their journey into accepting God's will. This is pulled off in a very natural, realistic way without feeling condescending or preachy. In fact, it often feels more like a character journey about religious people rather than a Sunday sermon. Thus my grade for "Breakthrough" is an 8/10.