The Case For Christ Movie Review

The Case For Christ is a movie from the team that brought us God’s Not Dead and God’s Not Dead 2. The film is about about an investigative reporter from the Chicago Tribune, named Lee Strobel, who sets out on a quest to prove the God is not real by disproving the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Through his research, he discovers something astonishing.

This movie has done something no other Christian film before it; the film received a fresh rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. At the time this review was written, it sits at 75% with an 84% score from general audience members.

Personally, I really liked both God’s Not Dead movies, but, even I can admit that there were times when they went a little bit toward cheesy or beating you over the head with the message that “God is real.”  This movie never once heads toward that cheesiness level.

Throughout the whole movie, we see a man who wants nothing more than to disprove the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is the whole basis for the Christian Faith. He also has to wrestle with everything he thought he knew and everything that is presented to him.  I was kept intrigued the entirety of the film by this wrestling with beliefs and discoveries of facts, I even learned some things I never knew before.

This cinematography is by far the best I have ever seen in a Christian film. Overall, it a beautiful movie to watch.  They even had a recurring framing of the camera that helped to set this movie apart with its own tone.  Whenever a moment was tense or a mystery was being uncovered, they had shaky/handheld camera shots at just the right moment to help build that tense feeling.

Regarding the acting, the main character, the reporter’s wife, and the more important supporting characters were cast very well.  here were only a few minor missteps, as far as the performances go.  Those minor missteps, I feel, were more of a writing and dialogue issue that could have been fixed by some changes from the writers’ room or changed by the director while filming.

As for the drawbacks of this movie, there are only a couple major ones. They all come with the editing, too. Quite a few dialogue scenes are edited in a way that, when the back of someone is toward the camera, their actions or mouth movements don’t line up with what’s being said at all.  On top of that, I don’t even know how many times someone would start an action with the camera at one angle and then the camera would cut to another angle and the person would restart that action. To me, editing matters a lot and I feel that those two issues could have been easily fixed if they just took the time, plus, there were a few scenes and shots that could have been shortened up just a bit to make the pacing better in a few places.

Overall, this is the highest quality Christian movie I have seen and it could very well be the tipping point for legitimizing Christian movies in many non-Christians’ eyes.  I give The Case For Christ 9 out of 10 investigative reporters.

Review by Austin Clemen