Come Sunday

By allowing Ejiofor the time and narrative space, even allowing many of the sermons to play out in full, to express Pearson’s confliction, Marston has created one of the more restrained explorations of faith in quite some time.

The movie's pounding heart is the remarkable Ejiofor. Imbuing his role with authority, charisma, mighty strength and wrenching human frailty, he's enough to make believers of all of us.

Ejiofor’s performance make the movie; the rest, you may just have to take on faith.

The movie that’s happening in Ejiofor’s eyes is far more wracked and compelling than the one that Marston shows us through his own.

Despite committed performances from most of the cast (especially Ejiofor, who imbues Pearson with a gentle yet stubborn spirit), Come Sunday can’t shake its middling script and perfunctory direction.

Come Sunday makes an admirable effort to delve into religious conviction and changes in faith, but comes up feeling too normal and disconnected from those matters.

In the film, Joshua Marston leaches the narrative of nearly all the social texture that infused and empowered “Heretics,” the 2005 episode of the This American Life podcast that inspired this biopic.