God Bless the Broken Road

When you check the credits of this one and see that the God's Not Dead writer/director (Harold Cronk) is involved, you expect a really preachy story of Christian Faith. This assumption here would be totally wrong. Years ago there was a dramatic film about Vietnam Vets called "Coming Home" which addressed the issues facing those veterans when they came home. It was a powerful film. This one is just a little short of it in a different dramatic story line. This film goes into the still going Afghanistan war and updates the story adding a crisis of faith to it. This plot addresses the crisis of a widow who lost her husband in Afghanistan, and nearly lets it destroy everything she has in her life. Her focus is on what she lost and not what she still has. Despite having a lot of help being offered to her by family and friends, she nearly loses everything. It is because she can not bring herself past her husbands death. She has a young daughter to raise alone. death. While her friends and relatives are there, and keep offering her help, she will not open up about her personal dilemma and withdraws instead. Then the broken road starts to being in pieces that can fix her problems and she ignores them at first too. For instance, it is late in the film before she finally opens the last letter her late husband wrote to her. The characters that help her throughout are her friends and neighbors at church, her mother-in-law, a race car driver, and a garage mechanic. They help despite her not letting them into her life with her daughter, who is the most important piece of her life still left. The race car driver has his own issues to address as well. The character who reminds me of the returning vet in coming home is the wheel chair bound Afghanistan vet, who needs to share something with her, but she keeps shutting him out. The main weakness of this story is that while the daughters grandma is there to help her grand daughter and has to deal with losing her son in the war, there is no mention of grandpa, almost like he never existed as far as I can determine. I have to guess that for some reason Grandma is widowed. Andrew W. Walker as race car driver Cody Jackson is good support for Lindsay Pulsipher as Amber Hill (and this films center is Amber). Makenzie Moss as daughter Bree Hill has a solid performance as the 4th grader. LaDainian Tomlinson debuts as Pastor Williams and his scenes are good. The films cast is all solid. I am glad to see a film looking at the loss here at home of an Afghanistan vet, and pray that some day we will be out of this conflict. It is now the longest conflict in our history. Afghanistan became totally ignored the last 10 years, too often by a US Media more interested in creating gossip for it's own agenda, versus reporting on real events.

This is a great movie except for the mother in law who is / was completely and totally heartless. I am a U.S. MARINE and if I were killed in action and if I were looking down and seen the mother in law treating my wife and children the way this mother in law was in this movie I would NOT be happy at all. The mother in law committed a federal crime in this movie and personally I would have wanted her charged and sent to prison. Other than the mother in law this is a great movie full of faith and inspiration and love except on the mother in law part.

Lindsay Pulsipher has a difficult and sometimes unlikeable role to play - a widow having a tough time adjusting to the loss of her husband in Afghanistan. She loses her home to foreclosure, pushes away her helpful Mother in Law and a race car driver who likes her played by Hallmark regular Andrew W Walker. He looks a bit too disheveled here. Kim Delaney is a welcome presence as mom in law and she looks good a little elegant for the blue collar setting. It's a partially realistic look at a widow facing financial and other issues. She gets quite unlikeable but that's life. Worth a watch.

Sorry, but I found it completely simplistic and unrealistic. Characters were stereotypes.