Review of Fireproof (2008) by Filipeneto — 06 Jul 2018

This film tells how Caleb (Kirk Cameron), a firefighter chief, tried to save his marriage with Catherine (Erin Bethea) through a forty-day challenge proposed by his father, an evangelical Christian. This is just another so-called "Christian film" made by US evangelical Christians to propagandize their ideas.

They are very low-budget movies loaded with nasty and incisive religious propaganda, and this film doesn't differ from them, showing how a man without faith can be a terrible husband and how he changes when he embraces Jesus, his only way to save his marriage (and his soul, an implicit and subliminal allusion).

The movie says that being a Christian transforms you, that you're good if you're Christian, that you're bad if you're not a Christian, that religion brings moral values ​​that you will not have otherwise.

Unfortunately, I know many despicable people who spend their lives in churches or temples (regardless of religion) in a near heretical hypocrisy, so I've lost my innocence about it. Religion preaches moral values ​​but being religious doesn't necessarily mean practicing those values.

In fact, they're more easily apprehended in the heart of the family than on a religious temple. So the message of this film, partial and propagandistic, is at the very least too optimistic and unrealistic to be credible.

It's an insult to the intelligence of any thinking man who is not fanatically religious. Either way, the suggestions about marriage and how it should be are interesting and valid for anyone, even for an atheist, a civil union or a gay marriage.

But it's a film made by religious and these heresy could never be said. The actors performance is painless, the mushy drama around their marriage is boring, predictable and worthy of a soap opera...