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Fireproof
DVD
Sony Pictures, 2009.

Rated PG
Releases January 27, 2009
118 minutes (Cantonese, English, French, Spanish subtitles)

Fireproof is the latest project from the Kendrick brothers, last heard from with the surprise hit, Facing The Giants. The third movie to come out of their church's Sherwood Pictures, Fireproof stars Kirk Cameron (Growing Pains) as Caleb Holt, a firefighter who finds his marriage falling apart even while he's hailed as a hero on his job. His wife Catherine (Erin Bethea, daughter of the head pastor) is tired of trying to compete with Caleb's love for his job and addiction to Internet porn. As a result, she starts down the road to an affair with a doctor at the hospital where she works.

With the couple deciding to divorce, Caleb's father gives him a book called The Love Dare, which encourages a 40-day committment to doing special things for one's spouse to demonstrate love regardless of the response. Partly due to questions about the existence of the book during production, the Kendricks wrote an actual Love Dare book and saw it crack the Amazon top 10 in sales. It's currently #1 in the "marriage" and "devotional" categories.

Not surprisingly, things work out in the end, but the story comes through better than many might expect. Fireproof doesn't claim to be epic movie-making; however, it's surprisingly good for a movie with a budget of only $500,000, largely because of all the volunteers from the church who helped make the movie. Cameron was paid, but donated his fee to a camp he and his wife founded. Thus far the movie has generated over $33 million at the box office, making it the #1 grossing indie film of 2008, an amazing story in itself.

The success of Facing The Giants is what made Fireproof possible. The former was made for only $100,000 and grossed over $10 million. It also prompted Cameron to contact the Kendricks to let them know he'd be interested in working with them in the future. Since Flywheel was made for only $20,000, we've seen a five-fold budget increase in each movie by the Kendrick brothers. Will the next movie have a budget of $2.5 million? Stay tuned.

In any case, we can be sure that more uplifting movies will be coming out of Georgia, encouraging Christians and spreading an evangelistic message reminiscent of Billy Graham's World Wide Pictures, famous for producing church "Film Night" movies back in the 60s and 70s. If the quality keeps increasing at the rate we've seen, the future looks brighter for Christian movies than it has in some time.

The DVD special features include some behind-the-scenes humor, making of the movie features, and a Casting Crowns music video.

Visit the Fireproof site.

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