Recommendation and Review: The Second Chance, A Film By Steve Taylor

Posted byChaplainmikePosted inRecommendations and Reviews

thesecondchance_l200602061637.jpgPeter Chataway has a great interview with Steve Taylor at his site.

Every year during Martin Luther King, Jr. week I try to show a film that raises issues of racial reconciliation. Last year, one of my teacher friends, Jim Kelly, recommended I use Steve Taylor’s feature film directorial debut, The Second Chance. My initial reaction was “Christian movie. It will be an embarrassment.” Then I saw that Michael W. Smith was one of the leads, and I knew enough about Smith to deduce he wasn’t going to be the next Daniel Day-Lewis. So I was expecting a dud. I wasn’t going down the route of Facing the Giants.

I did trust my friend’s judgement, however, and I knew two other things: Steve Taylor wasn’t predictable in anything he’d ever done artistically. He was a person with craft and edge. I also knew that Michael W. Smith has talked about how deeply he was affected by the life of poverty chosen by Rich Mullins. So I took the chance and showed the movie to three of my classes. I’m doing the same this year, with similar results. It’s a wonderful, well made, deeply “Christian” film that speaks to exactly what evangelicals need to hear these days.

It is, without any spin, a must-see film for readers of this site. Hands down, the best contemporary feature film of the specifically “Christian” genre I’ve ever seen. (I know Taylor agonizes over the connotations and assumptions behind the “Christian” label. Don’t worry, Steve. This missile needs to go right into the church. It’s well aimed.)

Let me get the negatives out of the way. Smith isn’t Daniel Day-Lewis. At points, his acting is weak, but overall he does a good to excellent job. What’s important is that Smitty understands the role of a CCM-superstar, pastor’s kid, megachurch pastor-designate. He gets the world this young man is coming from and he knows how to play the tension created when an evangelical megachurch star from the suburbs is forced to work in the inner city. It works.

Taylor’s script needs a stronger ending, and at places it’s a tad predictable, but it is far better than anything Fox Faith has produced- take the cheesy manipulation of The Ultimate Gift, for instance- and the film goes places and does things under Taylor’s guidance that no other evangelical Christian would ever take on, and he does so without being corny even once. (Including interactions with gangs and lots of inner city culture that most Christians would never be able to portray “on pitch.”) Taylor is able to show us the suburban megachurch realistically and sympathetically, and to show us the inner city church- and its pastor- honestly and without glorification. The bad guys become a wee bit predictable at the end, but Taylor doesn’t partake too long in stereotypes. He sees and feels the complex dilemmas of these racially and economically divergent worlds, and he opens your eyes to both. The problems addressed in this film won’t be solved by the pastor going up on the roof, and we are never supposed to think it will be that easy. But it’s progress.

Taylor has a deft touch with the worldview and rhetoric of the white suburban evangelical version of Christianity. He shows us a version of discipleship that interprets the Great Commission as television, music, money, numbers, attendance and good feelings. But he also shows us how “whiteness” and privilege create a maddening blindness to the worlds of others. It’s a revelatory moment when Smith’s character looks right at the black pastor and says “Let’s give Jake a hand for the great work he’s doing in the worst part of town.” You may not twinge the first time through, but after multiple viewings, I can feel the pain. It’s humiliating to realize how blind we can be.

Taylor’s creation of Jake, the pastor of the inner city church, is also exceptional. Jake is a passionate, compassionate, combative person. His fuse for hypocrisy and abuses of power is short. He’s flawed, but his flaws are partially because he’s watched the success of a former pastoral mentor turn into the paternalization of his church with money and photo-ops. When, on his annual visit, he tells the wealthy congregation of the sponsoring megachurch to either come down and find a place to actually serve or “keep your damn money,” it’s an electric moment because of its truth. The flight to the suburbs and the abandonment of a segment of the church along color, cultural and economic lines is a sad, bitter, pathetic legacy. We need to repent of it.

And what sets Jake off? After a huge choir and orchestra performance, the former mentor brags, “Who says church has to be boring?” But when Jake is talking about the need for PEOPLE to come to the inner city and tutor, volunteer and invest themselves, guess who’s yawning? The recently entertained congregation. It pushes his button, and it should open all of our eyes to what so many of us have become: entertainment addicts who call their entertainment “Christianity.”

This is a movie about different worlds. Different racially, economically and culturally. It’s a movie about where Jesus is in relation to both these worlds. And it is a movie about the connection between different parts of the body of Christ that should make the Kingdom of God a greater reality than either world.

Smitty’s character suggests sending a youth group down to the inner city to work because the junior high pastor speaks “ebonics.” When he’s forced to do a stint as the assistant pastor for Jake- played wonderfully by Jeffrey Carr- he begins to learn the ugliness of his own world and the beauty of this world where prostitutes, addicts and lots of good people surviving make up the pastor’s flock. He learns that “the show” at the megachurch and “the walk” of a pastor on the streets are two very different things.

I’ve only touched all the great things about this movie. This is a film that will create outstanding discussions. Buy it, watch it several times, write up a study and discussion guide, and then plan an event utilizing the film. It’s a film with enough laughter to offset the blinding sun of the truth, but more than enough truth to disturb those of us who drive right past poverty and opportunity in order to get to a worship service where we will be “entertained.”

No one gave me a free copy of this film, and if we can get Steve Taylor to keep up this quality of film making, the phrase “Christian movie” just might be salvageable.

17 thoughts on “Recommendation and Review: The Second Chance, A Film By Steve Taylor”

  1. Well, I for one love christian films…whether cheesy as many would call them or low budget films.They are meant to glorify Christ and draw us closer to his will for us, by imparting Godly wisdom. As a society we are so used to movies with special effects of millions of dollars that when a movie has unknown actors and low budget settings we tend to yawn and say “where is the real entertainment”. This movie in particular…I saw about 40 minutes of it yesterday and I was actually annoyed and offended at the cursing and often times suprised at the character of the inner city pastor. They made him out to be an angry Black man (that often was controlled by his anger and on the verge of cursing). I understood his position, but where was his humility and Godly wisdom to deliver God’s message to those blinded by their comfort and wealth. I will give it a try and finish watching the movie. But so far I am actually…disappointed. By the way I loved Facing the Giants, fireproof…Movies focused on conversion and saving the lost. God Bless

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  2. This film is a must see. I got for Christmas from my 17 yr old daughter I’m a fifty something SBC preacher. Not a CCM fan at all. But Taylor,Smith and Carr hit the nail on the American church’s head. OOch ! This is a must see for every local church to see and think ON………….contemporary prophetic up lifting too. Steve T does a fictional Blue Like Jazz movie?? Let da man have another movie shot.

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  3. This is an extremely well-done movie, though it was painful to watch all the folks at the wealthy church as they repeatedly missed the point time and again. It just kept reminding me of people I know.

    Because people really are that clueless.

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  4. Hey, thanks for the tip, Michael. I actually bought this film for my son when it was on sale. And we never watched it. I guess after seeing “Thr3e,” and “The Ultimate Gift” and a few other Fox-Faith, explicitly Christian films, we didn’t have any incentive to watch this one.

    I will have to dig it out and put it in the player this weekend.

    By the way, your line “When, on his annual visit, he tells the wealthy congregation of the sponsoring mega-church to either come down and find a place to actually serve or “keep your damn money,” it’s an electric moment because of its truth.” really hit home. I was actually part of a church where this happened. Our “inner city” supported church actually did tell us after a year to keep our money. I think where they told us to put it was even a bit more scatological.

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  5. Steve Taylor wasn’t predictable in anything he’d ever done artistically.

    Definitely a finalist for “Understatement of the Year” award. 😉

    I’ll agree that, in general, the ending could have been stronger, but for a Christian movie, the ending was akin to Arnold Schwarzenegger circa 1971.

    But, I’m shocked — shocked, I tell you — that you don’t read my blog faithfully. (j/k) I plugged this movie almost 2 years ago. I was fortunate enough to be in one of the “limited release” cities and got to see this on the big screen.

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  6. Thanks for recommending this movie, Michael. The place I work was given a preview of the movie about 4 months before it was in theaters, and we whole-heartedly promoted it.

    While I think I was in the minority, I loved the ending. The movie was more about the relationship between the pastors and their relationships than the church politics, and I was rather impressed that they ended it without a resolution on the church issue.

    The megachurch depictions were disturbingly accurate, though. Anyone in a suburban church with a mission in the “inner-city” (and mine is one of them) needs to see this. I always knew Steve Taylor would be the one to make a good film that bucked the trends.

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  7. This is an extremely well-done movie, though it was painful to watch all the folks at the wealthy church as they repeatedly missed the point time and again. It just kept reminding me of people I know. When you never minister to the poor and needy, you really don’t understand at all what they need, and wind up putting your foot in your mouth more often than not.

    Steve Taylor got it exactly right many times, and Michael W. Smith turned out to be a much better actor than I expected. (It was mentioned on the special features that he’d been taking acting classes. I wish every musician who tried to take a stab at acting would do likewise instead of just relying on their star power to get themselves roles.)

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  8. I really enjoyed this movie. It is one of the few contemporary Christian movies I have actually gone out an bought. I think it would be a great discussion to watch with non-christian friends that have a bias against Christians/church because they see it like the mega-church in the movie.

    Thanks for the great review!

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  9. Don’t forget “Since I Gave Up Hope, I Feel a lot Better.”

    Excellent Review, Michael. I agree that this is one of the best explicitly “Christian” films that I’ve seen. The only place I might disagree is in your assessment of the ending needing to be stronger. While most Christian movies (and most general market movies, for that matter) tend to wrap up the ending nice and neat, all problems solved or on their way to being solved, I appreciate a film that can leave the ending ambiguous. No, the problems aren’t solved, but I’m not sure if the characters know what else to do.

    I’m really glad to see a film that can show real life without giving any easy answers to the problems faced. Sometimes people we pray for and work with stay lost. Sometimes Christians are jerks.

    By the way – I’ve heard Taylor’s next project is a fictionalized version of “Blue Like Jazz.”

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  14. I liked the movie a lot. I saw it first at a minister’s retreat. It stirred a lot of great discussion.

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  16. Absolutely agree with your assessment. I was shocked by how much I was moved and convicted by this film. It’s not the greatest cinematic achievement in the world, but it’s definitely in the top-five of “Christian” films. Every believer should give this one a chance.

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