Breakthrough

You don’t have to believe in divine intervention to be moved by this story.

Actress turned director (TV’s “House of Cards,” “The Americans”) Roxann Dawson balances the hospital room action with the impact finding the lost boy had on the faithless paramedic. There are beautiful moments that capture the quiet terror of death by drowning.

Both Metz and Lucas are solid enough, but their fairly stock characters do not emerge quite as vividly as they might have. On the other hand, Topher Grace is extremely engaging as the hip, rap music-loving pastor who initially rubs Joyce the wrong way but eventually wins her over in a plot development that is not exactly brimming with surprise.

The result won’t sway nonbelievers, but is mostly watchable and occasionally even moving.

What you don’t feel, ever, in this fundamentalist weeper is a sense of drama rising out of feelings that are less than absolute.

For the already faithful, believing in John’s miraculous recovery demands not a leap of faith, but a small hop. The film tells them absolutely nothing that they don’t already presume themselves to know. So what, then, is its point?

It’s a harrowing tale that deserves a much better movie than this insipid junk.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Faith-based film of an unbelievable story of survival, told through a religious lens, whether or not you believe in the power of prayers to raise the dead, we can look at the incident as an inspired story, how the mother (Chrissy) loved her son and believed that he will be recovered regardless of the doctor's opinion, I think sometimes we need to believe in something that has more power than science to save who we love even if it let us down. Solid performance by Chrissy Metz, she was perfect in the mother role. Actually, it's a good movie to watch for believers and maybe unlikable for non-believers, because "Breakthrough" focus a little more on the mother's faith and the prayers of the entire community.

Cute, emotional story that pushes too hard the Christian agenda. The acting was ok, but it left me feeling like I was being indoctrinated.

(Mauro Lanari) Roxann Dawson's debut proposes the return to the fold of Christian theism as panacea against nihilism, and not the Nietzschean one but the one that in Western culture begins with the fatalistic epic of Homer. The resounding success of Kendrick's films guarantees her that she won't need much faith to be sure of the box office takings. And she eludes the age-old problem that thaumaturgy is taboritically ephemeral and sporadically widespread because, evangelically and factually, it is only a "firstfruit of the Spirit" (Romans 8:23) for proselytizing purpose.

Several places were overacted and easily predicted; this could be a better movie but the director made it too preaching-like and boring.