Review: "Courageous" is a tazer of a preachy cop flick

"Courageous" PG 13
The creators of the religious firefighter drama Fireproof bring another middle America religious drama, this time with police officers, or at least, amateur actors playing cops. Immediately the story does a staged but inaccurate carjack chase, (the truck was in park during the cab scenes, a cop would never do that, etc), leading to the religious black cop's revelation to the white friend that his child was in the truck. The good white cop and his buddies go through some trauma. One of them befriends an immigrant Mexican man who he happens to meet on the road, after hiring him to build a shed (as God makes coincidences possible), and then later the white guy's friend's plucky daughter is killed in an off screen car crash. Its hard to tell which white guy is which because they're such wooden actors, but they haven't likely ever been in many movies outside their church, as they're actually church people acting. These hoodlems are involved in local drug crime too, and the other coincidences, and one of the thugs is picked up and put in a cop car for some amusing Police Academy like goofy stuff, (again irrational as cops would never put a thug with a civilian in their car), and then the cops all take a pledge because they all helped to be Christians (possibly Evangelicals). They also have a bad cop who gets caught. Then there is a big dramatic finish stolen right out of any number of cop chase movies. The move tries too much to preach at the audience and force home the notion of 'courage as Christ' which seems interesting considering the implication of 'Christ as martyr who died for the sins of men' is also evident. It was popular at religious men's functions, made a little box office, and supposedly if who are already Christian you will love it. It's not a bad movie, just overly preachy. At least it isn't Fireproof, which was not very good. The actors are at least partly convincing, except for the chemistry between actors, which is sometimes dreadful. It would be much better had it not been a vehicle for selling converted bible study literature and was just an afterschool special on USA channel.
Review by Adam Browne