Review of The Wager (2007) by Joe H — 07 Mar 2012

Very interesting movie, I pretty much enjoyed it and it was very neat to see how they portrayed God working in his life. Plus, I mean... Randy Travis... And he's just pure awesome. I think if there was anything I had to "complain" about (and "complain" is too harsh a word) it's that it suffered from the same semi-"disease" that the previous PureFlix movies I watched suffer from ("Christmas With a Capital C", "Marriage Retreat", specifically): throughout the movie there is a build-up to a "climactic" ending, whether it's a bad guy who turns good, a failing marriage that's saved, or someone who's having trouble and seeking God's guidance. But for some reason the ending is never quite "climactic" enough. In these specific three movies (which I really like a LOT, don't get me wrong) it's like the movie is building up, building up, building up... and then the writers were like "...Oops! We've reached our story-limit, gotta wrap this up now!", so it feels like the "I escape, somehow" complex (see "Thumb Wars" :D)... in this case it's "Everything is RESOLVED! ...Somehow". You almost feel like you skipped a couple chapters of the DVD or something. Again, I really like these PureFlix movies a lot. It's just, this is a "trend" I'm noticing with them, unfortunately. They do a great job of building up, but it always seems like they realized they were running out of time so they had to just suddenly end the movie and sacrifice a real "climax".

Again, that said, I still found the movie very engaging and definitely caused me some inward examination. So, 4 stars out of 5!!