Review of The Cokeville Miracle

The film starts out well, there's good character development, the plot line is subtly introduced and is later fully revealed which keeps interest high. The introduction captivated me, Nathan Stevens did an excellent job, and his acting skills are probably one of the main reasons I didn't give this film one star. The other cast members were excellent as well, however, about half way into the movie I lost almost all interest. The only reason I enjoyed watching from that point was because it was absolutely hilarious to me how pushy this film's values are. The film took a very opinionated turn, and a few scenes that show this are one, the scene in which Claudia Hartley (Sarah Kent) is talking to her husband, Ron Hartley (Jasen Wade) about how miraculous it is that all the children and faculty survived, and that it HAD to be the work of God. God forbid someone think it was the work of Allah, or even worse, luck. The second scene, well really a collection of scenes, are of children telling stories of seeing angels and relatives that helped them. The entire second half of the movie is purely dedicated to convincing the husband that it wasn't just by chance and that it was the work of God. The moral of the story, not surprisingly, is that we should recognize God's existence and appreciate him for what he does. Understand where my comments about a biased retelling of the Cokeville Elementary Bombing comes from now? Again, the first half of the movie was excellent in my opinion, but from then on it was incredibly biased and even comical, to me at least. I can appreciate a film like "God's Not Dead", because even though it attacks Atheism and portrays it in a poor manner, it's not a story that ALL religious groups would be interested in watching. The incident of the Cokeville Bombing is known throughout the world, and is relevant throughout the world, therefore it shouldn't be tailored only to one group of people in the world. Those who believe in Allah should be able to watch it without being pressured, those who believe in things like chakra should be able to watch this movie without being pressured, and those who believe there is no god, like myself, should be able to watch this movie without being pressured.