THE RELIANT had one thing going for it right off the blocks. Adventure stories about the survivors of apocalypse and societal breakdown are still fashionable and always fun. Fans of this genre will even spot you a plot hole or two if you make it exciting enough for them. This movie, however, doesn't earn the benefit of the doubt.
Some will say this movie fails because it's a Christian film. That's not the reason. The faith element could have been both a central and interesting part of a cool movie night had things been done well, but they weren't. The filmmakers squander all the built-in good will that comes with a popular style in favor of bad writing and unsubtle sermonizing.
Like many here, I really wanted to like this movie ... but I can't. Having a positive faith message simply doesn't compensate for bad filmmaking. The irony is the message would have been more powerful and better received if the story had been allowed to do its work without the moralizing, one-dimensional narrative dialogue so plentiful in this movie. The ham-handed obviousness in THE RELIANT can be legitimately described as offputting and reveals a fundamental misunderstanding among the filmmakers about how messages are more effectively conveyed. Simply put, in this movie, there's too much telling and not enough showing and, while brimming with faith in God, it seems to have little faith in audience.
At the same time dialogue is being wielded like a blunt instrument, the filmmakers target the LCD with an unforgivably hackneyed and most assuredly counterproductive pro-gun message guaranteed to trigger gun control proponents (and rightly so). It's nervy to break out the old "guns don't kill people, people kill people" and "If you criminalize guns, only criminals will have guns" bromides, then link them to Christianity as if somehow the two are monolithically related. Spoiler alert: They aren't. Even as someone who supports the Second Amendment, I empathize with the great many people of faith who might find these suggestions to be an embarrassing misrepresentation of their beliefs, if not outright offensive.
Even setting aside the messaging misfires, not much is well in THE RELIANT. The acting performances are at worst eye-rolling and at best workmanlike. The production values are nothing special. Some plot devices are simply too contrived to support any suspension of disbelief. Perhaps worst of all, the well meaning focus on faith suffocates because it endeavors to push us rather than to lead us.
This film gets three stars only because, sadly, there are plenty of films out there that are worse.
