Review: The Apostle (1997)

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The Apostle

Rating

Director

Robert Duvall

Screenplay

Robert Duvall

Length

2h 14m

Starring

Robert Duvall, Farrah Fawcett, John Beasley, Miranda Richardson, June Carter Cash, Walton Goggins, Billy Bob Thornton, Billy Joe Shaver, Rick Dial, Todd Allen

MPAA Rating

PG-13

Basic Plot

The Apostle is the story about an Evangelical preacher who is blind of his own sins and continues preaching God’s Word.

Review

Robert Duvall plays Sonny, a Evangelical preacher who has spent his life shouting and dancing God’s ministry. As with many stereotypical preachers of this sort, Sonny finds himself in situation after situation that would cause other pastors to blush. He’s an abusive husband, an alcoholic and eventually performs an unspeakable act for which he must run away from his life and assume a new identity: The Apostle EF.

The film contains about an hour of preaching and the remaining hour passes between dramatic events and transitions between preaching.

I’ve never been the kind of person to sit through long sermons and not fall asleep. I resisted great temptations throughout this film to keep from doing so. Robert Duvall’s capable acting helped as did the acting of Farah Fawcett and Miranda Richardson.

Outside of some great acting Apostle doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on. Many things step out in my mind as being insensible to be placed in the movie, others are understandable, but feel pointless.

One of those parts of the film is Billy Bob Thornton’s racist convert. This character means nothing to the film and it could stand alone without him. Not to mention shaving off about 30 minutes of fluff.

If you can stand to sit for two hours and listen to a sermon and really want to see Robert Duvall’s performance by all means go see it, but if you’re not as patient as I tried to be this is not the film for you.