Word: fireproof
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...Growing Pain or Comeback Kid? Kirk Cameron topped your pop chart as most shocking for his role in Fireproof, a movie that promotes fidelity [Oct. 13]. The copy quips, "Don't call it a comeback. Because it's not." I believe it is an important comeback. Fireproof is an independent film that has the potential to help restore relationships and give real hope. When was the last time Hollywood offered that? Michelle Radford, Greenville...
...Fireproof is a Christian parable, a sermon ornamented with a story, about a firefighter named Caleb (Kirk Cameron) whose marriage with Catherine (Erin Bethea) is falling apart. This theological imperative makes the film an anomaly among current releases. But almost as daring is its tackling of that taboo movie subject, an ordinary marriage. This isn't a weepie, where the beautiful wife is dying, or a thriller, with one spouse trying to kill the other - just two people facing the burdens of living together after the first passion has ebbed, when the idle words and gestures of the person...
...Fireproof, Cameron took no salary, just a donation to the Christian camp he runs for children with serious illnesses. And since he's vowed to his wife Chelsea to kiss no other woman, he used her as a stunt double for the Catherine character in the one scene that required a long-shot kiss. Apparently he never made a vow to good acting. Playing a nice guy who's close to a breakdown, Cameron is a one-man festival of overacting: massaging his temples to keep his brain from exploding, tweaking his eyebrow line to relieve some midlife migraine, taking...
...Cameron's emoting is just one of the movie's flaws. But it's not quite fair to judge Fireproof by normal critical standards. For one thing, it's made not to win awards for brilliance or even competence but to sell a message. (The film is stuffed with citations from the New Testament: James 1:19, Romans 5:8 and 10:9, if you're reading at home.) For another, it has some of the charm of amateur filmmaking - a belief in itself, in pleasing and educating its core audience. In that sense, Fireproof is like Tyler Perry...
...theory, Fireproof is as alien to me as Religulous is familiar. At more than two hours, the film will make those viewers restless who aren't utterly resistant. But there's something affecting about its artless earnestness, its aim to dramatize large portions of ordinary lives that most movies ignore. I wasn't converted, but I was charmed...