Word: cameron
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...Fireproof is a Christian parable, a sermon ornamented with a story, about a firefighter named Caleb (Kirk Cameron) whose marriage with Catherine (Erin Bethea) is falling apart. This theological imperative makes the film an anomaly among current releases. But almost as daring is its tackling of that taboo movie subject, an ordinary marriage. This isn't a weepie, where the beautiful wife is dying, or a thriller, with one spouse trying to kill the other - just two people facing the burdens of living together after the first passion has ebbed, when the idle words and gestures of the person...
...with only one other screen credit, is natural and affecting in a role that begins sympathetically, turns cold just when Caleb is getting his promise-keepers act together and at the end has to melt into a resignation that could be renewed love. The one familiar face belongs to Cameron, who as a teen played scampish Mike Seaver on TV's Growing Pains and has since become the Tom Hanks of the niche evangelical-movie market, starring in the three films based on the Left Behind series of Rapture novels...
...Fireproof, Cameron took no salary, just a donation to the Christian camp he runs for children with serious illnesses. And since he's vowed to his wife Chelsea to kiss no other woman, he used her as a stunt double for the Catherine character in the one scene that required a long-shot kiss. Apparently he never made a vow to good acting. Playing a nice guy who's close to a breakdown, Cameron is a one-man festival of overacting: massaging his temples to keep his brain from exploding, tweaking his eyebrow line to relieve some midlife migraine, taking...
...Cameron's emoting is just one of the movie's flaws. But it's not quite fair to judge Fireproof by normal critical standards. For one thing, it's made not to win awards for brilliance or even competence but to sell a message. (The film is stuffed with citations from the New Testament: James 1:19, Romans 5:8 and 10:9, if you're reading at home.) For another, it has some of the charm of amateur filmmaking - a belief in itself, in pleasing and educating its core audience. In that sense, Fireproof is like Tyler Perry...
...Kendricks' business model is hardly one a major studio could replicate. Unlike a typical Hollywood set, on a Sherwood set, Cameron says, "You don't have people walking around saying 'They don't pay me enough to do this,' cause nobody's getting paid anything." The filmmakers relied on a team of 1,200 volunteers, plus a handful of technical crew members working below rate. They also secured a donated train, hospital wing and fire trucks. Rather than the usual TV spots and billboards, Fireproof's marketers invited Christian publications on set and screened the film early for pastors...