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The List
For many years I have been waiting for that one “faith-based” movie that comes along and breaks through the secular boundaries, becoming a huge hit both financially and critically… you know, the kind of movie that gets a 90% score on RottenTomatoes.com and secures a sequel or two. Alas, The List, from the Fox-Faith DVD label, isn’t that movie. Don’t get me wrong, The List is an honest attempt in film-making, but regrettably it falls into the same category as almost every other “faith-based” movie – it tries to be, and do, too much in too short a time span.
Based on the excellent page turning novel by Robert Whitlow, The List, is a tale of lawyers, greed, love, prayer, and the supernatural. It’s a little bit John Grisham, a little bit Stephen King, and a little bit Frank Peretti, and as a book it worked well. Unfortunately the story, which worked in novel format, fell apart pretty quickly on the silver screen, as there wasn’t enough plot development; the book took the time to explain things through, whereas the movie assumes too much.
The modest budget didn’t help thing’s either, as the movie looked like an average, run-of-the-mill made for TV movie, which seems to be the bane of “faith-based” movies. Moreover, the acting wasn’t anything to write home about, which was confusing to me because many of the actors, including Malcolm (Halloween) McDowell, Pat (Batman) Hingle, and Will (The Postman) Patton, are well known and have proven themselves to be more than capable actors in other films… what happened here? It seems that most of the actors were on set to collect a cheque and forgot one important thing – to act. Maybe the producers should have given them all a “V8” slap on the back of the head and said, “We’re paying you for this!?!”
The music, on the other hand, was very atmospheric, which made some of the scenes quite tense, but sadly for a thriller there were just too few tense scenes. I was waiting for something to happen, waiting to jump out of my seat, and nada, nothing happened. There wasn’t even a big “payoff” at the end of the movie, something that would have made me say, “It was worth watching because…” Instead, it just seemed to fizzle out.
The story itself is quite clever – The movie begins with an opener similar in style to a National Treasure movie; a clandestine meeting in which a group of 12 men are to sign a book in their own blood, thereby securing their financial security by means of dark spiritual forces. When one of them refuses to sign, he is promptly “dispatched.” This means however that the circle remains unbroken.
Until know – enter story a young Charlotte lawyer, Renny Jacobson, who learns early on in the movie that his father has suddenly died. Returning home to Charleston, Renny is shocked to discover that his father left his significant estate ($22 million) to charity, only leaving Renny an old gold coin and leather bound book. It’s not long before Renny is contacted by an unknown, obscure entity, known as The Covenant List of South Carolina, Ltd.
With the promise of power and wealth Renny makes plans to attend the next “List” meeting, but not before he meets and falls for a woman named Jo Johnston, whose father has also just suddenly died and, coincidentally, had ties to The List. It’s not long before they become caught in a web of intrigue, deception, greed and spiritual warfare that reaches from the steamy coasts of South Carolina to the secret vaults of Swiss banks.
It all sounds more exciting than it actually is. The List plods along and gets nowhere fast, which is a shame because I remember the book to be a lot tenser. I’m no film-maker, but must be hard fitting a 400+ page novel into a 1 hour 40min movie and include all the story intricacies, plot twists and character developments. And it must be even harder to go up against the “big boy” movies out there that entertain us with their fast dialogue, and even faster action sequences. Maybe I’m just too conditioned by the “Hollywood movie machine” that churns out hit after hit, but I found The List to be somewhat, for want of a better word, lacklustre.
So, is The List a total waste of viewing time? Christian audiences may get something out of the story, especially the scenes involving prayer, which were well placed in the movie and weren’t overbearing, as in many “Christian” movies. However, the underlying spiritual warfare storyline, which was a major focus in the book, never truly surfaced, and I would go as far as to say that non-Christian viewers might actually be confused by what is happening throughout the story; it seems that this movie was made for those “in-the-know”, if you know what I mean.
The List is a very clean movie and has no nudity, sex, bad language, or violence to speak of, so The List is a safe bet for family viewing. The underlying supernatural elements are tame compared to the slew of recent supernatural PG-13’s we are seeing released these days, so again nothing to worry about in this department. The only thing I would say is that younger viewers would probably get very bored and restless with this movie.
Some books transfer well to the silver screen, and over the last couple of years we have seen some amiable attempts by “faith-based” film-makers to give visual life to books including End of the Spear, To End All Wars, Frank Peretti’s The Visitation, and Ted Dekker’s Thr3e. It’s a shame because I had high hopes for this movie. I never thought it was going to be as good, or as highly polished, as a Hollywood produced Grisham adaptation, but I thought it would at least be an entertaining and safe way to spend a couple of hours. Safe, yes – Entertaining, not so much.
As a fan and supporter of “faith-based” movies I feel terrible when I can’t say good things about a “faith-based” movie. Believe me when I say that I want to recommend The List, but I would be lying if I said anything but, “Skip the movie and read the book.”
Christian St John
April, 2009
The List novel by Robert Whitlow
The List on DVD
