 October
2007
This month's reviews/features:
Flywheel
Flywheels and Other Essentials
According to the Encarta World Dictionary, a flywheel is “a heavy
wheel or disk that helps to maintain a constant speed of rotation in
a machine or to store energy.” Now I have to admit that when I heard
that Flywheel was the title of a movie I should see, I wasn’t
exactly enthusiastic. I needn’t have worried, however.
Flywheel is a terrific movie with a powerful message about
how we must give all of our heart to Jesus.
Here’s what the picture is about: Jay Austin is a dealer who owns
a used car lot in a small Georgia city. Ostensibly, Jay is a
“religious” man who attends church and goes through the motions with
the best of them. It’s all a sham, though; Jay isn’t walking with
the Lord at all. He puts his tithe envelope in the collection plate
but doesn’t include a check in it. He’s a poor husband and an
inattentive father. Worst of all, he cheats his customers by greatly
overcharging them. One day the pastor of his church comes in to buy
a car for his daughter. Jay sells him a car which, he assures the
pastor, is in excellent condition and is a really good buy. It’s a
lie, but Jay can’t seem to keep from telling it. Things are not
going well — he’s behind in his mortgage payments and is on the
verge of losing his business — but he believes he has to cheat to
survive. He’s trained his sales assistants to bilk the customers as
much as possible.
Meanwhile, things are deteriorating on the home front too. His
relationship with his son is virtually nonexistent. Jay’s wife
confronts him about his dishonesty; he reacts in anger, and she goes
to bed in tears. But then things start to change. Jay overhears his
son talking with a friend, saying he doesn’t want to be like his
father. At the office he watches his chief salesman dupe a young
girl, but when Jay criticizes him for doing that, the salesman says
it’s a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Soon he resigns.
So why is the movie called Flywheel? It just so
happens that an elderly mechanic who works for Jay has been trying
to fix an old TR 6, telling Jay that what the Triumph needs is a new
flywheel — in other words, a new internal governing device. The same
is true of Jay — he is in dire need of a new moral flywheel. His
mechanic, a believer, tells him as much. Jay undergoes a painful
transformation.
Flywheel premiered in 2003 and was the first film
made by a group from Sherwood Baptist Church in Georgia (who in 2006
released their second feature, (Facing the
Giants). Alex Kendrick wrote, directed, and produced
Flywheel and plays the role of Jay Austin with
considerable skill. The other actors, all members of Sherwood
Baptist, do fine in their roles. The picture doesn’t have slick
Hollywood production values, but it has something much better: its
core reflects a heart for the Lord. Go down to our West Side DVD
center and check it out. You’ll be glad you did.
Film Rating: PG
Rating: 3 ¼ stars
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Index of movie
reviews...
(2003 reviews through present)
Jay Maurer, a member of West Side Presbyterian Church, is
a long-term movie buff and former college teacher of The Film as
Literature. He has written movie reviews for The Good News
(West Side newsletter) since 2002.
If you have comments or questions
about the movie (or play) reviews, please contact Jay at
dramachap@msn.com.
Ratings are expressed in
increments of ¼ star.
A rating of 2 ½ stars or higher is meant to be a recommendation.
1 star: poor
2 stars: minimally satisfactory
3 stars: quite good
4 stars: superb
Criteria for determining the ratings:
- Reflection, either explicit or implicit, of Christian values,
including suitability of language and lack of gratuitous violence
- Quality of the acting
- Originality
- Unity of the entire picture
- Substance, or in the words of C.S. Lewis, weight
Other Christian movie review Web sites:
Plugged In Online
ChristianityTodayMovies.com
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