Do You Believe?

A pastor meets a man carrying a cross in the street and realises his own faith exists only on paper. In his Sunday sermon he puts one question to the congregation: do you believe, and if you do, what are you doing about it? The film watches that question echo through twelve separate lives. The subject is not theology but whether belief turns into action. The stories intersect: a homeless mother and daughter, a veteran on the edge of suicide, a couple who lost a child, a young man trying to leave a gang, and a doctor facing a lawsuit at the hospital. The form is multi-strand narrative, the familiar structure in which everyone eventually touches everyone else. The choice to gather them all into a single accident at the end drew the most criticism; coincidence is presented here as providence, and that reading is not left to the viewer. The production belongs to the wave of American independent faith cinema; the same team had already reached a wide audience with God's Not Dead. It did well at the box office relative to its budget while taking almost uniformly negative reviews. Jon Gunn directs. The cast includes Mira Sorvino, Sean Astin, Ted McGinley, Lee Majors and Cybill Shepherd. Who it is for: viewers looking for American faith-based drama. Who it is not for: anyone who wants a narrative that does not push them to a conclusion; this film states plainly what you are meant to think.