Mountain Top

Good characters and good cast. My favorites were the minister/lawyer and the newspaper guy. This would make a great tv series.

This is a movie worth seeing. I was fortunate to see an early screening and even though I knew the story line from reading the book many times, I was carried along as if it were new to me. The movie is beautifully done in every way. The choice of actors who portray Whitlow's characters is excellent. The "movie in my mind" (you know the one you make up when you read a book) was flat and lifeless after seeing the depth and life that the actors brought to these characters. Barry Corbin makes you believe he IS Sam and Coby portrays Mike perfectly. The surprise for me was the actress who played Muriel-she was amazing! Whitlow's story artfully weaves these two very different men's lives together and shows you how "Papa" works all things together for good. His story is wonderful on its own, but when paired with the vision that Gary Wheeler brings in film, it becomes a movie that feeds your heart and spirit, wrapping you in the beauty of nature with perfectly fitted music as a backdrop. For anyone who loves a movie that carries you into the characters' lives and makes you root for them, laugh with them and cry with them, this is a movie for you!

This movie is special. Beautiful mountain scenery and superb acting. Barry Corbin as Sam makes you want to discover his "Papa". And Coby McLaughlin's portrayal as Mike Andrews , the lawyer turned preacher turned lawyer again makes you pull for him like your favorite sports team. You can feel his struggle to be a Godly man in his home and career and be true to his calling while trying to discern what this soothsayer (Sam) is trying to teach him . I mean you actually pull for the lawyer as the "good guy". The movie will make you laugh lots and cry a little. And the tears are as real as the characters. For God so Loved the world... The movie is unashamed of its message of love and the Lord but the characters are so REAL you feel you are living in the scenes. And I must say, Danny Vinson is one funny, under-appreciated actor. He is every small town newspaper reporter you have ever known, or imagined. A quality, well paced film. The music in this film is a perfect match for the scenes depicted. Amazing how Whitlow and Wheeler can bring to the screen these Whilow books. Every movie these guys do gets better and better.

Christian movies are getting better. This movie has a spiritual depth which I only seen in the Passion of CHRIST. It shows that communion with the FATHER can be so real that many will think you are a "crackpot". This is one of the wonderful things about losing yourself and being consumed by God

A pastor living near the mountains in western North Carolina (Coby Ryan McLaughlin) is approached by the wife of a man in jail for serious embezzlement. The couple (Barry Corbin & Lin Shaye) insists that God wants him, a former lawyer, to be the defense attorney. But why take time away from his pastoral ministry to defend a criminal? Unless, the man's not a thug at all.

"Mountain Top" (2017) is a crime drama written & directed by a coproducer of "War Room" (2015). While not as powerful as that film, it's at least on the level of "God's Not Dead" (2014) and "Do You Believe?" (2015), just not as evangelistic and with a scenic mountain town milieu.

It's refreshing to watch a crime drama with overt verbiage concerning God and faith, yet it's thankfully done in such a natural fashion it comes across low-key and not overdone.

Valerie Azlynn is on hand as the pastor's wife. She looks like a tall version of Valerie Bertinelli when she was young.

The film runs 1 hour, 42 minutes, and was shot in Huntersville & Charlotte, North Carolina.

GRADE: B.