Mercy Rule

So this film is available on Netflix streaming and I wanted to see a Kirk Cameron movie. I know Cameron is a vocal Evangelical Christian and I was interested to see if this movie was religious based...

Anyway, its far worse than I could imagine. It's basically a rallying call against environmental regulation.

Kirk Cameron's son is on a little league team and he desperately wants to be the team's lockdown pitcher. That's the A plot, and it's more or less harmless.

But the B plot... oh man. Kirk Cameron's family runs a scrap business that's being investigated by the government for it's environmental practices. The way the portray this government "lobbyist" is something you'd see on Fox News. He's this slick, black suit wearing, elitist lawyer, who desperately wants to tear the family business down. Kirk Cameron even says in the film, "You're worse than a corporate raider, you're a civic raider!"

Disgusting anti-environmental propaganda.

Everybody has a miss from time to time and this is one for Kirk Cameron. Really disliked this chopped up, weird movie. What the heck is up with all the strange camera angles and slow motion? I don't need to watch someone fry bacon and make pancakes in slow motion. And the creepy softball coach? Is he mentally sound? Not someone who would have ever been my kids coach! Even those cute kid roles I could not get behind. This is not a fun family movie. It is boring, long & drawn out, political and stinky. I think I watched the whole movie with a look of disgust on my face. What were they thinking??

Mercy Rule is a family values film by the husband and wife Christian team of Kirk Cameron and Chelsea Noble. That it went direct to video speaks volumes about the faith the studios had in this one. In fact Kirk Cameron filmed an introduction to this film that says this is family entertainment.

I do have to say that this does avoid being hit over the head with direct Christianity. Still the message is obvious, if you've got faith you'll come out on top.

In this situation I rather think it was Cameron's eloquence before his town council that saved the day. Not an amen or a hallelujah and nobody spoke in tongues.

Two crises are confronting the family. The first is son Jared Miller having to learn that being on a Little League team requires team work. A lesson hard to enforce I'll admit when they hear about star players and some of the eight figure contracts they have. Still on the field teamwork does count.

The second is Cameron's family business founded by his father and it's a junkyard. Back in the day those folks did not deal with environmental regulations, but Kirk has to. His opponent who is environmental lawyer and activit James Bladon gets to take over businesses and companies due to his encyclopedic knowledge of business regulations. He's a sly one Bladon, his takeovers are all in the name of saving the environment. He's as hateful as any Snidely Whiplash villain from one of those 19th century morality plays.

This may not strictly speaking be a religious right epic, but it sure is an attack on the environmental movement. The reasoning here is the same that makes the same sex couple villains because they deliberately go into a Christian bakery with malice aforethought to put them out of business because they'll refuse to bake a gay cake. Just why Bladon wants to control Cameron's junkyard is never made clear.

Mercy Rule is not religious propaganda, but it's right wing propaganda and pretty heavy handed propaganda at that.

I don't know what to say. I have projectile vomiting due to the motion sickness inducing camera work, and I'm more than a little freaked out by the way Kirk Cameron tries to get his message across. Instead of painting a picture of hope and light, through which religious views should be relayed, Cameron draws from his own holier than now vision of himself, missing the point completely. From the beginning of the film there is a constant droning of horrible background music, uninspired camera angles which make even the baseball more boring than it is, as well as drowned out camera filters which have a slight vignette. This is not how you bring a message across. You can't combine scenes of a conversation with the added montage of a baseball game, single baseball game. Pardon my writing for being a little archaic today, this film has just angered me to no end. There is no continuity, there is no message here that anyone would want to hear, and I'm frankly insulted that I can't give it a 0. Kirk, take my advice, if you're looking to create a family film, you should create a film that is good for the entire family. It should be easy to swallow without going into too much detail, the message should be clear as well as fun to get to. The dramatic element should be heartfelt and genuine , not in your face and boring, coming through like a lecture on insurance premiums. I'm going to have an aneurysm, so I'm going to stop this review immediately. If you want a good religious message it's more fun just to go to church than to watch this movie. I'm done.

Propaganda films are nothing new. Film has been used as a tool to promote/push ideals on an unsuspecting public practically since the birth of cinema. Whether they be made to warn against the "horrors" of marijuana (Reefer Madness) gain support for the Nazi party (Triumph Of The Will) or serve the Christian agenda (God's Not Dead) movies are a constant tool for those who wish to not only change the way YOU think, but the way EVERYONE thinks. More often than not, they serve as laughable excuses for films that could only serve to inspire the simplest of simpletons to change their way of thinking, or, as is most often the case, to preach to the choir. The fact that there are those who will change their entire mode of thinking based on any of these films is both disheartening and frightening.

Mercy Rule is a 2014 "film" starring Kirk Cameron (Saving Christmas, Fireproof) and directed by Darren Doane (Who also directed Saving Christmas) The plot concerns the manager of a Waste Disposal site who finds himself in hot water when an environmental lobbyist approaches him, threatening to shut him down to to environmental concerns. What you may find odd about this premise is the decision to cast Cameron as the manager of the dump, and not the lobbyist. Surely, there's no way they could be making him out to be the good guy, right? Mercy Rule is bloated, inane, and above all, morally reprehensible. It portrays Cameron's garbage king as a decent family man who's simply trying to provide for his family. What's a little irreversible damage to the environment when he's just trying to feed his family, right? And shame on that nasty, evil environmental lobbyist trying to shut him down. If he shuts him down, he's shutting down America!! The movie's ideals are so ass-backwards that I genuinely felt uncomfortable while watching it. It has production values that would make something like Disney's Cadet Kelly look like The Godfather, and performances that are about as convincing as a Junior High play. The film also suffers greatly from it's length. It painfully stretches itself to two hours, with sequences involving the lead character's son playing baseball in slow motion set to irritating and repetitive dub step music. These sequences made for painful viewing, as they gave the impression that the filmmakers had no concept of editing, timing, or even film-making.

What bothers me most, however, is the film's message. The movie enforces this conceit that environmental journalists, lobbyists and activists are un-American, unscrupulous communists who try to put good, hard-working people out of a job. But the filmmaker's obvious capitalist, right-wing politics make every single frame a chore to get through. Barely a moment passes when we don't see the "Protagonists" either spending money or enjoying their luxurious, expensive home. The strong ideals mixed with the absence of any artistic merit whatsoever make viewing this film all the more difficult. What is equally troublesome is Kirk Cameron's introduction at the beginning of the film, in which he states that he was trying to make "A good, clean and wholesome film with good values that the whole family can enjoy." (Paraphrasing) Knowing Cameron's reputation as a religious zealot, I was expecting Christian propaganda not unlike Left Behind, Fireproof, or the already oft-mentioned Saving Christmas. What I ended up getting, was unexpected, and possibly even worse.

This movie is among the most heinous form of torture I can think of. You watch in horror as it stretches itself paper-thin, right before your eyes. If anyone's mode of thinking was truly changed by this film, I simultaneously scream in anger and weep in distress. The only change it had on my way of thinking was it made me hate movies for two hours. I got my love back shortly enough after. But if it were up to me in that time frame, I would have had the entire history of cinema erased in a heartbeat.