The Case for Christ (2017)

Based on the autobiographical book of the same name The Case for Christ tells the story of investigative journalist Lee Strobel's conversion from atheist to evangelical Christian. In 1980 Strobel (Mike Vogel) was an award winning journalist working for the Chicago Tribune with a pregnant wife (Erika Christensen) and a young daughter. One night at a restaurant Lee's daughter almost chocks to death on a gumball, her life saved by a nurse (L. Scott Caldwell) who fortunately knew the Heimlich maneuver, which was not as well known at that time. Later that nurse tells the couple that she originally had not planned on dinning at that restaurant that night but felt a spiritual prompting to do so.  Lee's wife Leslie has an emotionally strong response to this, gets to know the nurse, agrees to go to church with her, and eventually becomes a Christian. Lee is not pleased when he finds out about this and attempts to persuade his wife out of her new found faith. In order to accomplish this Lee decides to do what he knows how to do best and embarks on an journalistic style investigation over the course of months in an effort to disprove the resurrection of Christ, which he views as the central tenant of the faith, and that if he can disprove that he can get his wife back to how she was before.

However Storbel's investigation does not turn out the way he had anticipated, and Lee ends up convincing himself that the resurrection of Jesus is real, becomes a Christian, and subsequently a very well know apologist for the faith. Obviously a movie like this, even when very competently done as this one is, can not go into the nitty-gritty of its protagonists thought process like a book can. By the end of the film I still failed to understand, even giving allowance for the requisite 'leap of faith', what Strobel found so convincing in his research to change him for atheist to true believer. The film keeps coming back to claims about various non biblical accounts that firm up the resurrections story, Strobel seems to find the idea that there were 500 first hand witnesses to the resurrected Jesus very compelling, but other then the gospels (which were written decades later and obviously have an agenda) not a single of these accounts is named.

Still The Case for Christ is one of the best Christian proselytizing films I have ever seen. It's very well made, and despite an extremely limited budget for a big screen period piece, it has unusually good production value for a Christian film and unusually able direction and cinematography, as well as above average acting for the genera. Perhaps the thing I most appreciated about the film is that I didn't really feel talked down to, I can respect Strobel here, even as I can disagree with him. The atheist characters in the film come across as real people because they are real people, not the weak creations of some Christian screen writer, not caricatures, and especially not assholes, which is really refreshing in a Christian film. I'm a little surprised to find myself saying this but I can recommend The Case for Christ, the most reasonably toned cinematic effort to get you saved that I think I've ever seen. ***