The Forge

Rated PG • Theaters

The newest in an ever-lengthening line of faith-based films by the Kendrick Brothers, The Forge tells the tale of a fatherless boy finding a father in God. At first our hero, 19-year-old Isaiah Wright (Aspen Kennedy), devotes his days to playing basketball and video games until his praying mother Cynthia (Christian media personality Priscilla Shirer) gives him an ultimatum: Get a job and start paying me rent.

With a crummy attitude, Isaiah sets off to find a job—and notably not in his own car, a disused Mustang moldering in the family garage. The car was a project Grandpa was going to do with Dad, and Dad was going to do with Isaiah. But Isaiah’s dad abandoned his family, leaving an angry son behind. Like the car in the garage, Isaiah’s life needs a major tuneup.

Despite his anger and disrespect, young Isaiah attracts the mentorship of athletic-supply-company owner Joshua Moore (Cameron Arnett). Here the Kendrick brothers launch into the movie’s major theme: discipleship of men by men.

Moore poses three questions to Isaiah: In what ways do you want to grow in the next year? What kind of man do you want to be? What do you want people to think of when they see you coming? Moore gives Isaiah a job, some tough love, and mentoring sessions that teach forgiveness and the golden rule.

After an encounter with a Romans Road tract, Isaiah converts to Christianity and is inducted into Moore’s conclave of Christian men, the titular Forge.

Isaiah is at last getting his life together: paying rent, mowing the lawn, taking his mom to dinner, doing pushups, getting baptized, reading the Bible, and attending mentorship sessions with each man in the Forge. By the end of the movie, he and his car have gotten a makeover from the inside out. The moral: If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

Like its predecessors, the film is unobjectionable and family friendly. But at what cost? The squeaky-clean scenes feel overedited and posed, like a family portrait. The film’s tension feels manufactured at times, particularly in the wearisome third act when Moore’s fitness company races to keep the business of a major client. Tense music alerts us to high stakes we just don’t feel.

In its favor, The Forge gives us a fun soundtrack and a couple of funny moments in Mom’s hair salon. And it does tug the heartstrings and offer a satisfying reveal, which I’ll save for you to discover if you wish. Kennedy’s and Arnett’s performances make the most of a predictable script.

The Forge is not a movie so much as a thinly veiled nondenominational sermon. Instead of real people, we get caricatures. It’s loaded with characters reading and reciting Bible verses and includes favorite sermon points such as discipleship, prayer, and forsaking idolatry. A wise elderly woman warns us to treat prayer as a steering wheel, not a spare tire, and characters prove their devotion to God by giving up frivolous hobbies. For some viewers, these aspects of the film will be enough to recommend it.

But the story clearly springs from the message rather than the message naturally from the story. Stories created with this recipe feel maudlin no matter how commendable the message they espouse, and The Forge is no exception.