This is not my type of film. My bad I thought it was Anna Kendrick and not Alex Kendrick. This is an overtly come-to-Jesus film. It doesn't try to hide the message like a lot of films. Hanna Scott is a klepto with a dead beat father whom she believes is dead. She has asthma and runs cross country. Heck, they might have well made her one-legged too. The school's basketball coach is now the cross-country coach and doesn't know anything about running. He learns from a blind man in the hospital dying from diabetes who happens to be Hanna's father. Please make me stop, this is starting to make me groan. And the violin and piano music made for sweetly sad Jesus moments. And I am sorry to say when I hear, "who are you?" I always think of "The Who."

. . . Steroids. At least that's what my Uncle Al said, after dragging me to see OVERCOMER. Al says that OVERCOMER is a great running flick, IF you can clear out the forests of cultist evangelizing, implausible kleptomania, family melodrama, depressing economic slumps and competing histrionic queens to see the actual trees. (Al should know about such things: He coached high school and college cross country teams for several decades.) According to Al, NO interscholastic state championship has EVER been the first victory of ANY jogger's career! (Apparently, such a thing--IF it could happen in Real Life--would be akin to a Go-Kart loser swilling down the milk at the Indy 500 for their first taste of victory anywhere!) However, Al also points out that IF any state were foolish enough to put hundreds of competitors together in a race and discriminate in favor of a single contestant by letting her take a hit of steroids (the main ingredient of most asthma inhalers) whenever she needed a stimulant to turn on her after-burners and jet past the next runner unfortunate enough to NOT be aided by performance-enhancing drugs, then spectators MIGHT witness a bogus "Miracle" triumph. OVERCOMER, therefore, does an excellent job of alerting America to beware of this next wave of PED cheats!

A basketball coach at a Georgia Christian school (Alex Kendrick) is devastated when the local factory shuts down and the school loses half its students, along with a decrease in pay for him and his wife, who also works at the school (Shari Rigby). The principal appoints him to coach the cross-country running team, which consists of ONE girl with asthma (Aryn Wright-Thompson) who lives with her grandmother.

"Overcomer" (2019) is a Christian-themed drama from the maker of "War Room" (2015),one of the most inspiring films ever made and a surprise hit at the box office, which ain't bad for an indie that only cost $3 million. This one cost $2 million more, but isn't nearly as potent. Yet it's still a solid drama with some poignant Christian-themed points that smack of real life. I could relate to several of the points, e.g. feeling like your life was a mistake and the negative fallout of an absent or distant father.

Some other themes are effectively driven home, like: the importance of the relationship of husband & wife to the health of a home; it's never too late for redemption; the power of the repentance/forgiveness dynamic; and how easy it is to fall into the pretense of Christian religion, i.e. spiritual hypocrisy. Anyone who sincerely tries to walk with the LORD will relate to these kinds of elements. Meanwhile some non-Christians will likely scoff and find these aspects fake (they couldn't be more wrong).

Sure, some of the acting of peripherals might not be of blockbuster caliber, but that's par for the course in these kinds of indie flicks. But the performances of the main adult players are fine. Speaking of which, Cameron Arnett is outstanding as the blind hospital patient and mentor on long-distance running. Was the coach's chance meeting with him an eye-rolling coincidence or a divinely-orchestrated encounter?

The film runs 1 hour, 59 minutes, and was shot in Columbus & Albany, Georgia, with shots of Nashville.

GRADE: B