I'm a proud member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and I went into this movie expecting and hoping it would be good. Boy was I disappointed.
I think the story that the movie was based is a truly incredible one me and absolutely deserves to be told on the screen...which is why it baffles me that Christiansen managed to drop the ball so hard on this one. The score is honestly pathetic. It plays the same 3 piano pieces over and over and over for the entire movie duration which ended up making the runtime feel double what it actually was. It was hard for me to get invested in the action when there's the one track that they use whenever there's tension playing. It also felt like there were no stakes especially near the end. The entire nazi force is represented by this one German soldier that's randomly hellbent on stopping the missionaries. There's also really no climax to the movie. It just has a montage where he saves the rest of them and then he get to the mission center where the most egregious writing sin happens. "And then everyone clapped" is the is one of the dumbest writing tropes there is and they employed it in the worst way possible at the end by literally having everyone clap. Which brings me to the dialogue. Oh goodness the dialogue. There is just one thing I have to say to anyone reading this that isn't a member of the church: WE DO NOT TALK LIKE THAT!!!! This movie makes it seem like we talk in ridiculous archaic language and always quoting scripture in every other sentence and I hate it. I must assure you we talk like normal people and we talked like normal people did in the '40s.
I think the story that the movie was based is a truly incredible one me and absolutely deserves to be told on the screen...which is why it baffles me that Christiansen managed to drop the ball so hard on this one. The score is honestly pathetic. It plays the same 3 piano pieces over and over and over for the entire movie duration which ended up making the runtime feel double what it actually was. It was hard for me to get invested in the action when there's the one track that they use whenever there's tension playing. It also felt like there were no stakes especially near the end. The entire nazi force is represented by this one German soldier that's randomly hellbent on stopping the missionaries. There's also really no climax to the movie. It just has a montage where he saves the rest of them and then he get to the mission center where the most egregious writing sin happens. "And then everyone clapped" is the is one of the dumbest writing tropes there is and they employed it in the worst way possible at the end by literally having everyone clap. Which brings me to the dialogue. Oh goodness the dialogue. There is just one thing I have to say to anyone reading this that isn't a member of the church: WE DO NOT TALK LIKE THAT!!!! This movie makes it seem like we talk in ridiculous archaic language and always quoting scripture in every other sentence and I hate it. I must assure you we talk like normal people and we talked like normal people did in the '40s.