The Second Chance

The film “The Second Chance” opens under the credits with scenes, vignettes if you will, of gritty, inner-city realism, setting the stage for this “walk a mile in my shoes” story of personal integrity and obedience to the call of God in a fallen and broken world.

Contemporary Christian music artist Michael W. Smith makes his feature film debut as Ethan Jenkins, the wayward son come home and heir apparent to the pulpit of The Rock, the ministry empire of his father, Jerry Jenkins (J. Don Ferguson). The elder Jenkins is building a worldwide ministry, planting churches all across the globe for the sake of the Kingdom. His first church plant, a small, struggling congregation on the wrong side of town, has become a local ministry focus as The Rock provides much needed funds to run outreach to the down and out of the inner-city.

Jake Sanders (Jeff Obafemi Carr) is the pastor of this church, hand-picked by the elder Jenkins to be his youth pastor and, now, pastor of this work. Through circumstances that are not altogether clear, we see the younger Jenkins thrown into partnership with Jake, against both his and Jake’s will. Will he survive this ordeal and take his rightful place at The Rock?

“The Second Chance” opens with powerful vignettes and never rises above them. One vignette after another pasted together to form a cinematic mosaic that never really achieves the goal of story. At least not one story, unified by plot and unfolding through three acts punctuated by intriguing plot points, or story turns. Not one story that allows us to know and embrace the characters to the point that what they say or do really matters.

There are elements of what makes a great film, interesting character traits (Sonny is a believable and, perhaps if we knew him at all, loveable man), conflict, theme, visual elements and interesting camera work and cinematography. But none of the elements ever really come together to rise above TV series mimicry or movie of the week schmaltz and create a great film. The whole piece thumps along from vignette to vignette, eventually reaching a denouement that is nothing approaching climatic.

The film contains several uses of slang “bad words,” but nothing profane or vulgar. There are visual references to prostitution and gang activity, and a brief thrashing for one of the thugs. There is semi-threatening gunplay, the kind that creates a rapid and audible, though brief, inhale, but amounts to nothing more than a quick flirtation with “authenticity of character.”

Many of the vignettes reveal wonderful human values such as courage, sacrifice, humility, etc., and would serve as excellent sermon illustrations on the big screens of most of our mega-churches, against which this film so poignantly rails. There is a message, a moral, if you will, but the story never really materializes.

“The Second Chance” has its place, and certainly a very nice Sunday School curriculum could be written and distributed using this film as a point of reference. We can learn much from the vignettes from Nathan and Jake’s lives, or even the lives of Tony or Sonny. But in the end, this type of film sets Christian filmmakers back to where Contemporary Christian Music was in the eighties, sub-standard knock-offs of mainstream art.

What really bothers me about this film is that it really amounts to a “dirty laundry” diatribe against the current mega-church bureaucracy that really, in the end, is an intramural debate and ought not be so scathingly aired in public. All of those folks who skip church on Sunday morning and cry “hypocrite” are vindicated, to some extent, by this film.

[ Why would I want to be a Christian when there are so many hypocrites? Answer ]

It just so happens that for the most part I agree with producer, writer, and director Steve Taylor, and have since his eighties music run with songs like “Color Code.” Some in the church have turned to high dollar naval-gazing and the rank, borderline-blasphemy of church growth for the sake of growth. All of the “activity” we enable our brothers and sisters to engage in tends toward legalism at best and out right idolatry at worst. We try to earn the stripes of our salvation and all the while ignore the One by Whose stripes we are healed. We do, do, do and go, go, go often to our own spiritual detriment. We miss the point that our good works flow FROM faith, rather than acquire it.

If you want a wonderful, feel-good, popcorn and Pepsi evening at the local Cineplex then I highly recommend “The Second Chance”. If you want to see excellent filmmaking replete with engaging characters, solid plot and sub-plot lines, unexpected plot twists, and a powerful, climactic ending, go see something else. And when this film comes to DVD, buy it or rent it for your pastor and church governing board.

Violence: Minor / Profanity: Minor / Sex/Nudity: None

See list of Relevant Issues—questions-and-answers.

• Positive
• Neutral
• Negative
• Young people