Before starting the actual review, I have to set something up that some of you may or may not disagree with. I believe that Christian movies need to be compared to "secular" movies, not to other Christian movies. I feel the same way about music. A Christian band might be great compared to other Christian bands, but if it isn't good when compared to a secular band, then who cares?? So many people throw around the term "Christian" with relation to media as if it is a genre. It is NOT a genre. It is a theme. WAY-FM plays a ton of different genres (rock, r&b, acoustic, rap, pop, alternative) all with the same theme of being Christian. That's one reason I don't like it; when I turn on the radio, I'm in the mood for a specific genre, not a random collection of music with the same theme. But that's another subject. The point is that Christian-themed movies need to be compared to other movies in their respective genres. To Save a Life should be compared to any and all movies that are dramas. That does actually include other Christian-themed dramas like Fireproof, which I'm sure I'll compare it to a lot.
Okay, review. I'm going to start with the negatives because I enjoy pointing out negatives more than I do positives. That's kind of twisted of me, but whatever. If you want the positives, skip past this point.
To put it plainly, To Save a Life has too much going on. Each of the individual stories that are affecting the main character, Jake, are interesting in and of themselves, but there are just too many of them. Specifically, I didn't feel like the story involving his parents' was necessary. That could have been a movie by itself, and it was effective by itself, but it felt like clutter. The most important stories that really boosted the movie's theme involved Jake, his girlfriend, the outcasts, and a youth group. They were what the movie was about. The parents were just something else to throw in to make Jake's situation that much more dramatic. I felt it was too much.
In addition to the parents, I felt like the pastor's kid (PK) plot was way too over the top. All it did was make me angry. That's not to say I don't think a kid like that could really exist, but I felt like it was an extreme example of cruelty and maliciousness. Yes, we all know PKs are typically kind of bad, but this guy was another level of bad. I'm not talking about some of the troubled things he does, I'm talking about his passion to sabotage Christianity. To Save a Life uses other extreme situations to get points across, but I felt like they worked. Even if they are rare in real life (some of them are rare, some of them definitely are not rare), they do in fact happen and people do have to deal with them. I'm not against extreme scenarios, but the PK caused To Save a Life to lose some believability.
To end my list of negatives, I'll say that the main characters, specifically Jake and Amy, looked far too old for their ages. That didn't matter so much in their time as seniors, but when they were freshmen it was glaring and very distracting. They made Amy look younger by giving her pigtails and made Jake look younger by giving him a baseball cap. Really??
Those are my negatives. Now to the positives.
To Save a Life is the best Christian-themed movie I've ever seen. Easily. It blows Fireproof and Facing the Giants out of the water. They shouldn't even be put in the same category. They are horrible, awful, badly written, badly acted, badly directed, and poorly realized movies. To Save a Life is none of those things.
According to Box Office Mojo, To Save a Life cost $500,000 to make. Just to check, Fireproof cost the exact same amount. They cost the same, yet Fireproof looks like a $10,000 movie while To Save a Life looks like it has a budget. Visually it's great. The cinematography is good, the sets are good, the costume design is good. The world felt real. Maybe some of the high school stuff was exaggerated, but I can't speak to that because I've never experienced California close-to-the-beach schools. To Save a Life used it's budget really really well.
The acting was surprisingly good. I don't know if those were real actors or not (as opposed to church members like in Fireproof), but they did a very good job. Award worthy? No, not really, but good enough that I never thought, "wow, that's poor acting!" They were believable. The script is really great as well. The script very rarely sounds stilted or unrealistic, which is more than even movies like Avatar can say. Not only that, but the story is effective. I was emotionally attached to the movie from beginning to end. I saw where some scenes were going (not always a bad thing), while many others were very unpredictable.
I can't talk about this movie without talking about how it handles Christianity. There were a lot of times that I felt uncomfortable and was even frustrated at what the movie was making Christians do on screen. It was lame. It was annoying. It was typical. And then the movie begins to attack itself and attack those annoying Christians! I was borderline shocked and slightly elated. I thought the movie was being hypocritical, then all of a sudden it points out the hypocrisy in Christians. Not only does To Save a Life hit all the Christian-movie-requirements (salvation scene, deep-in-prayer scene, watching a pastor preach scene) better than I've seen, but it also completely goes against the grain of the Christian culture that annoys me so much. It's a PG13 movie with cursing, blood, drugs, drinking, and even implied-sex. Finally! We have a Christian movie that doesn't dumb down real life to such an extreme that it is no longer real.
I came into To Save a Life with a really critical attitude. I wanted to see a movie with a Christian theme that was done well just as much as I wanted to have another reason to bash the annoyance of Christian culture. That's a messed up way of thinking and there is something wrong with it, but honestly I'm really glad the first thing happened so that I didn't have to do the second. To Save a Life is a genuinely good movie. Will it be effective for non-Christians? Most of me says no, but that's only because I don't think non-Christians will see it. Also, this movie still is a Christian production with Christian labeled all over it, and I don't think that will ever be as effective as a Christian movie made within the Hollywood system of business. That's sad, but true. Unless non-Christians are really searching or unless they want to seek out more reasons to pick on Christians, they won't see this movie.
Let me end by saying that To Save a Life desperately needs more marketing. Tell your church about it, tell your youth ministers about it, and spread the word that they need to see it. I would hate for the only good Christian-themed and produced movie to do poorly when compared to crapfests like Fireproof. Go see it. Tell others' to see it. Normally I wouldn't support marketing so much, but I want Christian culture to recognize that being real matters and is more important than conforming to your base and old ways of thinking. The only way that message will be sent is if this makes more money than dogpiles like Fireproof. Right now it's at over $2,000,000 (a profit), but Fireproof made $33,000,000. Shameful.
To Save a Life is not without fault, but none of those faults are debilitating. It remains a very solid piece of film, and I believe that it is genuinely good. Is it the best movie I've seen this year? Well, hah, if we're talking about 2010 releases, then quite possibly it is. But it doesn't appear to be the type of title that will hold that throne very long. The score below is when I compare it to all of film. If I were to simply compare it to other Christian-themed movies, it would easily get a 10/10.
Potential based on Preview: 4/10 (I found the preview to be borderline incomprehensible and completely overstuffed)
Actual Movie: 8/10
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