Secretos familiares

It is such a joy to watch a western with the qualities that made this nation great when it was. When I watch a movie like this I understand that the values that this Western propagates are not the values of the past but the only hope for our future. It has elements of confronting one's past with deliberate honesty after having been delivered to a different path than that past life, and finding grace of God waiting in the end. It is a movie that looks to the future with hope and vigorous knowledge of the birthright the movie is alluding to in Christian faith, the birthright of his kingdom come and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Excellent movie!

It's 1890 Arizona. Martha Rose Jacobs (Sarah Drew) is living her perfect life with husband Jeremiah Jacobs (Lucas Black) and daughter Hope Jacobs (Olivia Sanabia). One night, her past upends her life with a vengeance. They are attacked by a gang led by her father William 'King of Hearts' Bridges (Jeff Fahey) and Hope gets kidnapped.

I like the start and the opening premise. It's a B-western with aspirations to be a good spaghetti western. The filmmaking starts to falter a bit. A few things start bugging me. There is no way that she would hesitate to shoot that guy. She would probably shoot him in the back. She already shot someone in the back. There is no need to do that old trope where the good guy do not shoot first. That guy is shooting at her husband. She needs to put that guy down without warning. Finally, I find the whole card motif thing going overboard. They can be called that, but there is no need for the tents. It's a little ridiculous for rampaging fugitives to be putting up circus tents. There is a good idea here, but the execution keeps getting in the way.

The only reason it didn't receive 10 stars from me.was its use of modern bible version scripture references. This movie was authentic in so many ways; from the cinematography to the music to casting to screenplay. The only Bible version that was widely used during the timeframe and setting of the movie was the King James Bible. For that faux pas it gets only 9 stars. Whether this was intentional because of the bent of the producer or director remains to be seen.

Lucas Black and Sarah Drew's performances shined in my opinion but there were no characters in this movie that were weak. I highly recommend this movie.

What a joy it was to see a new western with a Christian theme.

This isn't a big budget blockbuster production but it does have a very good cast of actors portraying likeable characters in an entertaining plot with attractive scenes and a "bad girl makes good" theme that is fun to watch.

We need more movies like this for families to watch together.

There are no robots, monsters, zombies, aliens or superheroes in capes.

The lines between good people and bad people are blurred, but, underlying good virtues prevail.

Like the good old westerns of Hollywood's heyday the moral at the end of the story is one of redemption, faith and love.

Although gun violence is portrayed it isn't graphic.

There is no blood, profanity, nudity, drugs, alcohol or smoking and no sexually explicit content.

For a "B movie" it's very good.

Modern westerns typically only come in 2 flavors, excellent or barely watchable. This one is not in the excellent category by any means, but it was quite a bit less cheesy than Dead Man's Hand that I watched directly before this one (which was barely watchable). It's clean and knows what it is but the writing/plot is tedious at times and I thought many of the dialogue scenes were too long and drawn out. Production was obviously on a budget but was ok. Acting and costuming were decent and shots were clean. Lucas Black was probably the least convincing of the bunch for some reason- I guess I've seen Tokyo Drift too many times.. "maaa ride".