Stats:

Movie:
The Apostle

Stars:
Robert Duvall
Farrah Fawcett
Billy Bob Thornton
June Carter Cash

Director:
Robert Duvall

Date: 1998

Bottom Line:
Do Not Recommend

The Apostle

I was expecting alot more from this film and I felt very disapointed afterward. Robert Duvall, the actor does a great job in this film. He'd better, since Robert Duvall also wrote, directed and financed this film. Unfortunately, Robert Duvall is not as gifted a writer and needs a little bit of help as a director.

Duvall's direction of his actors is excellent, but he really needed to be reigned in in terms of editing the film. The movie is about a Pentecostal Evangelist who starts a new church when he escapes from his old life after he murders his adulterous wife's boyfriend. Gee, the plot sure seems promising. But Duvall as the writer drops the ball in this film. Duvall doesn't seem to comprehend that his characters should advance the plot about them and the plot doesn't seem to matter much to him as a storyteller. The characters are not well written and Duvall never has his main character grow or learn from his errors. Sonny (Duvall) is not remorseful about killing a man or about his wife (Farrah Fawcett) leaving him. We are supposed to get the point that he is angry at his wife when he tears her face out of a photograph.
The film runs 2 1/2 hours and should have been edited down to 1 1/2 hours. In an interview Duvall gave before I saw the film, he said that he felt that small Pentecostal churches in the South were a unique American art form. Duvall overdoes the church scenes, - nothing is gained from from them in terms of moving the plot forward during 75% of the church scenes he filmed. After seeing the film, you have the distinct impression that you just saw a strange hybrid of a PBS documentary and a moving Christian experience.

I had a lot of problems with the writing and character development/introduction. When first we see Duvall, he is with June Carter Cash (cast as his mother) but I really thought she was playing his wife. When we first meet Fawcett, the scene is played as if she is his daughter and it isn't until he kills her boyfriend that it becomes clear that she is his wife.

Later, Billy Bob Thornton appears as a white racist in two scenes. He shows up in his second scene on a Caterpillar with some buddies to destroy Duvall's new church. Duvall causes Thornton to have a miraculous (and drawn-out) conversion. Afterwards, you would expect Thornton to probably return for church services, but he never shows up again in the movie. Although, of course after the conversion, there are more church scenes. There's just a lot of weak writing points like that that really mar this film.
On the other hand, it is refreshing to see an evangelist not being portrayed like a Jim and Tammy Faye Baker knock-off. Duvall's Sonny is an extremely devoted minister of God. It's just that Duvall doesn't seem to acknowledge any of Sonny's character flaws. But then, none of Duvall's characters in this film seem to have any depth or personality. He only cares about Sonny (possibly because that's his role in the film) and Duvall doesn't make his audience care about any of his characters either.