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Facing the Giants

Facing the Giants (2006)

September. 29,2006
|
6.5
|
PG
| Drama

A losing coach with an underdog football team faces their giants of fear and failure on and off the field to surprising results.

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Reviews

Ehirerapp
2006/09/29

Waste of time

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Tedfoldol
2006/09/30

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

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Murphy Howard
2006/10/01

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

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Jerrie
2006/10/02

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

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o-53044
2006/10/03

Sure to completely disappoint those who enjoy watching a movie full of cussing and murder and mayhem and explicit sex and drug and alcohol abuse.But if you love God and long for an uplifting Christian movie that is clean and very inspirational then this is a movie for you.

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feraghi
2006/10/04

It's Holy Week in Greece, and wanted to watch something closest possible to the spirituality of these days. Yesterday i was glad to watch the "Gospel of John" (2003). What happened today? Did God punish me because i'm not a good Christian, and subconsciously suggested me to watch this movie? Of course not. I'm probably not a good Christian, but this is not the point. Like everyone else, i have free will, so i could have picked a European or a Russian film to watch. Mea culpa, but i'd like to say a few words… Mr. Kendrick (if you ever read this), please do me a favor (and a favor to yourself) and reconsider some things: God is not Aladdin's lamp. He doesn't give us championships, success, new cars, great relationships, better wages. Most of God's people suffer during their lives. Most of Jesus' disciples, and saints, they have been tortured and died as martyrs. Can't forget of a modern orthodox saint who carried several health problems and finally died from cancer. He was so purified that he was connected with the Uncreated Light (or Tabor Light) of God. This elder had healed and saved many others, but never asked God to take away not even one of his sufferings. In addition, he asked God to "plant" him the cancer. He once said: "all these people who visit me, they have terrible problems: Family problems, problems with drugs, or cancers. I'm a monk, so i can't have family or drug problems. But i asked Lord to send me at least the cancer, so i'd share some of the pain of His children". This is called "humbleness", "sacrifice" and "love". Christianity should have been built around those terms, not around American (or any other) dreams. After all, God is not a capitalist or a patriot, neither a communist or a friend of one nation (or of a football team) and an enemy of an other. He doesn't care about things we (people) consider as significant (money, politics, lifestyle, success etc). Do you really think that this kind of movies can bring people closer to God? Honestly, i wouldn't like to believe there's a bad (f.e. misleading) or a selfish (f.e. profit) intention behind the film, but i believe it can work in the opposite (of the desirable) way. There are many who could think God is a kind of Santa Claus. If they try to approach Him the way it's suggested here (ask for insignificant things, read couple of Bible's parts and attach them in a silly way inside their daily activities, provoke God for signs, pray loud or in public, and children tell their dads they will be good kids and obedient to their "authority"), God will not answer. He certainly won't (of course there's a possibility for some to explain simple events under the term of "miracles", but this is a different story). What could be the result of this way? They will turn away from any other try or will to get closer to God, they will become atheists (which is "cool" nowadays), or they will fall in a deep dream that maybe one day their expectations will be fulfilled (by praying louder, or with being more obedient to the "authorities"?). As for the "giants", the only "giants" we have to face, are the ones inside our minds. The "giants" of vanity, ambition, pride, selfishness, complacent, lust and insecurity. We all have them. I have them. But we can do better. Movies like this they won't help, but i'm pretty sure that Mr. Kendrick can do better than that too.

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Steve Pulaski
2006/10/05

Facing the Giants takes two of the most cliché genres of film and merges them together to make an overbearing and monotonously cliché film. It takes the faith-based, bleeding-heart Christian subtext and stuffs it underneath the rugged storytelling quips of a pigskin drama and, in turn, makes a film that will win over its core demographic and not many others. You'd think that a company like Sherwood Pictures - one that is predicated off of making films that bear bold, Christian ideas - would try to branch out and reach as many as possible, rather than practically confining their films to their core demographic, leaving others as outsiders.After a promising debut like Flywheel, I would've thought writer, actor, and director Alex Kendrick (who is also the associate pastor of the Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia) would be going for something much different than something like Facing the Giants. With Flywheel, Alex and his brother Stephen, who served as the film's co-writer, the film concerned a used car salesman who, after careful contemplation and some religious involvement, found that his dishonest business practice of overcharging consumers for his automobiles was wrong and decided to "get right with God" and run and honest dealership (which is even referenced in this film by the shot of a license plate). The film portrayed the town of Albany, Georgia in a style I found close to a documentary-like format, with the whole area looking relatively unglamorous and the acting of most involved to be quite natural and believable. It wasn't a perfect film, bearing some instances of clear, rampant oversimplification, but overall, it was a strong film with a solid idea behind it. It also appeared from that film that the Kendrick brothers were going for a low-key but intimate manner of filmmaking rather than your typical, heart-on-sleeve kind of filmmaking many of these films utilize.With Facing the Giants, naturalism and low-budget photography is traded for a cloying artificiality and antiseptic niceness in shot and direction that wasn't present with the Kendrick brothers' debut. The dialog has been modified from a more subtle, less boisterous religious interference into tedious and redundant moralizing, where every line of dialog must reference God, faith, religion, or something of the sorts. If God was watching this film, I'm sure he'd get tired of the publicity and ubiquity of his own character.The film revolves around Grant Taylor (Alex Kendrick), Shiloh Christian Academy's head coach of their football team, who has beared a losing record for the past six years. When his seventh season opens with a three game losing streak, the players' fathers grow concerned about Taylor's consistent lack of authority over the players, and how yet another losing season could cost several players their scholarships and their opportunities at larger schools. Taylor is in talks to be replaced with the academy's defensive coordinator Brady Owens (Tracy Goode), who bears a more stable record than Taylor's. To rub salt in Taylor's already rough wounds, his car is breaking down, the income between his wife and himself is just a bit over $30,000 a year, and discovers that he is infertile and is unable to conceive with his long-devoted wife.Speaking of which, a great scene comes early in the film when all of this dawns on a sleep-deprived Taylor, who is sitting awake at the dinner table after hearing the players' fathers conspire to replace him and get him ousted as Shiloh's football coach. The pressure about the failing team gets to him, his finances become overwhelming, and just the thought that God has prevented him from having children makes him completely crack and break down. While Kendrick struggles a bit with the more emotional side of acting, this is a pretty somber scene that allows the audience to really look over what Taylor has to deal with before just breaking down under the crushing weight of everything. It's sad and undoubtedly relatable to many people.Taylor decides to kick his team into high-gear, coaching them with much more rigor, pushing his players to do more and achieve more than they thought they could, and play for themselves, their parents, their coaches, but most importantly, God, who they will praise whether they win or lose. Another interesting and motivating scene comes during one day's practice, where Taylor takes the team's leader, who doesn't seem to put his effort into everything he does, and makes him perform the "death crawl" (where one person gets on their hands and feet and crawls with another person on their back - the trick is their knees cannot touch the ground) to the fifty yard line of the football field. Here, Kendrick and the student (Jason McLeod) demonstrate completely invigorating acting skills that show motivation and power. For those reasons alone, the scene is made powerful and all the more intense, even if the outcome is more or less inevitable.Based on the rather basic evaluation of two key scenes in the film, you'd think I'd be praising Facing the Giants. In fact, I truly wish I was, as the Kendrick brothers are two of the most dominant and reliable forces in the independent Christian cinema movement in terms of producing films of some sort of creative and structural quality. However, those two scenes and a solid performance or two is all Facing the Giants really has. It shows inevitably troubled characters in an inevitably trying situation until they find their inevitable faith in God in an inevitably cheesy and oversimplified way that will carry them to the inevitable conclusion that will provide inevitable cheers from the film's core audience because of its routine but "inspiring" inevitability. The audience, and the Kendrick brothers, deserve so much more than something like this.Starring: Alex Kendrick, Shannen Fields, Tracy Goode, and Jason McLeod. Directed by: Alex Kendrick.

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ShelbyTMItchell
2006/10/06

As a Christian, I love this feel good movie. From the people at Albany Ga of Sherwood Baptist Church. As this was made out of labor of love and not out of money or nothing. The whole entire cast are made up of Christian people doing it out of the love of Christ.As football coach Grant Taylor is facing both professional and personal obstacles in his life. As he finally is at his wit's end and cries out to God. The one and only that can help him out.As a result, the football team starts winning. And he gets a much needed bonus. As he also gets more respect from the team and community as a whole.Really good family film to watch. As there are very few out there! This should be on your must have list!

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