I suppose if there is one segment of the working population that needs Jesus and needs some salvation and reformation in their attitudes and practices it would be the car salesmen. It seems that with the already trying and confusing process of buying a car, they exist to further complicate and subtly hinder the process by tacking on added warranties, surcharges, and ostensibly beneficial packages seemingly geared to help you but really help their commission. I guess associate pastor of the Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia Alex Kendrick recognized this because he decided to make the debut feature film for his company Sherwood Pictures about a financially-strapped used car salesman who intentionally inflates his prices and is hardly mailable regardless of who's buying a car. Despite turning a good profit, those around him, like his persistent wife and child, see his practices as dishonest and unethical, to which he decides he needs to dedicate his life to serving the lord. In which case, he begins selling cars at honest prices, even though those honest prices may not make him the richest used car dealer in Albany, it will still make him the most loyal and fair.
The salesman is Jay Austin (Alex Kendrick), who, to his credit, has clear motivations for why he does what he does. He doesn't take pride in screwing the average customer financially, but he has a family that he needs to run, employees he needs to compensate, liabilities he needs to attend to, and numerous forces, some of which are looking to shut him down. Not to mention, he has serious competition just down the street from a man who is also overpricing his vehicles. When his wife (Janet Lee Dapper) finds out he cut a poor deal to an innocent and helpful local pastor, she becomes angry with him, and their son begins to frown on his father's practices and not even consider him a role model any more. This further leads Jay to discover the word of God, but more importantly, discover a more human side of reality, which is just because he is struggling, that's no excuse to rip off other in his path.
Writers Alex Kendrick and his brother Stephen paint Albany, Georgia in a realistic, unglamorous light, which is part of the reason the film succeeds on an unforeseen level. Rather than paint the town and its locale as the kind of bland, vanilla caricatures that should exist as real people but don't, the Kendrick brothers keep the whole thing honest and ruffled in the sense that no characters appear perfect, everyone's wearing clothes that have a little stain on them or need ironed, and everybody looks like practical, working class people. Even the way the film is shot - for a paltry $20,000 by film industry standards - the film looks as if the Kendrick brothers simply took a camera into the town of Albany and filmed its aesthetic and local residents in a "come as you are" kind of format. This results in a style that looks very similar to a documentary, which is perfectly fine with me. When so many modern examples of Christian cinema look to sugarcoat and beautify, the Kendrick brothers - at least in this case - look to humanize and shoot reality in terms of appearance.
With that, even the acting is solid for the most part. Excluding Dapper's occasions to overact (especially when her husband is facing an interview that could tarnish his reputation), every here does solid work. From Kendrick's believably hardpressed salesman character, to his character's rotund salesman Tracy Goode and Treavor Lokey, who act as workers in desperate need of money, the acting is uniformly solid. This is because nobody delivers long-winded monologues in a cheesy way and nobody tries to make their character out to be more than they are, in a metaphorical or allegorical way. And most important, the Kendrick brothers don't feel the need to insert the word "God," "Christian," or "Bible" into every one of the characters' sentences. Because this is absent, the characters can carry on with being just that - characters in a film about one person's desire to change hi sold practices and become more morally good.
Yet Flywheel does still have some issues it needs ironed out. For one, the disposition becomes too sunny at times, especially with the ending, where everything goes from possible calamity to just a happy ending in about a minute and a half. Just when the film is seemingly trying to disregard shortchanging simplifications it tacks one on at the very end of the film in a way that is almost unacceptable. However, the one thing that is present here - as it would also be in the Kendrick brothers' financial home-run Fireproof - is the slow, gradual change that our leader character must go through. Both Flywheel and Fireproof (though the first one better than the latter) show change in a slow-progressing manner and not an instantaneous change like some films have the tendency to do. With this, the film doesn't seem to shortchange and simply seems like it's trying to enlighten.
Flywheel may not be polished in terms of production values, nor perfect in its representation of events, but it is a solid start for a Baptist Church turned film company to make and produce above-average Christian films for a clearly demanding and willing audience. The film has just enough relatability and ideology to appeal to its core fanbase, but also has the ability to be at least enjoyed and maybe even appreciated by the irreligious demographic, like myself, who look at films like this as a way to connect with another group of people. For that regard, the film succeeds on a level all its own.
Starring: Alex Kendrick, Janet Lee Dapper, Tracy Goode, and Treavor Lokey. Directed by: Alex Kendrick.
The salesman is Jay Austin (Alex Kendrick), who, to his credit, has clear motivations for why he does what he does. He doesn't take pride in screwing the average customer financially, but he has a family that he needs to run, employees he needs to compensate, liabilities he needs to attend to, and numerous forces, some of which are looking to shut him down. Not to mention, he has serious competition just down the street from a man who is also overpricing his vehicles. When his wife (Janet Lee Dapper) finds out he cut a poor deal to an innocent and helpful local pastor, she becomes angry with him, and their son begins to frown on his father's practices and not even consider him a role model any more. This further leads Jay to discover the word of God, but more importantly, discover a more human side of reality, which is just because he is struggling, that's no excuse to rip off other in his path.
Writers Alex Kendrick and his brother Stephen paint Albany, Georgia in a realistic, unglamorous light, which is part of the reason the film succeeds on an unforeseen level. Rather than paint the town and its locale as the kind of bland, vanilla caricatures that should exist as real people but don't, the Kendrick brothers keep the whole thing honest and ruffled in the sense that no characters appear perfect, everyone's wearing clothes that have a little stain on them or need ironed, and everybody looks like practical, working class people. Even the way the film is shot - for a paltry $20,000 by film industry standards - the film looks as if the Kendrick brothers simply took a camera into the town of Albany and filmed its aesthetic and local residents in a "come as you are" kind of format. This results in a style that looks very similar to a documentary, which is perfectly fine with me. When so many modern examples of Christian cinema look to sugarcoat and beautify, the Kendrick brothers - at least in this case - look to humanize and shoot reality in terms of appearance.
With that, even the acting is solid for the most part. Excluding Dapper's occasions to overact (especially when her husband is facing an interview that could tarnish his reputation), every here does solid work. From Kendrick's believably hardpressed salesman character, to his character's rotund salesman Tracy Goode and Treavor Lokey, who act as workers in desperate need of money, the acting is uniformly solid. This is because nobody delivers long-winded monologues in a cheesy way and nobody tries to make their character out to be more than they are, in a metaphorical or allegorical way. And most important, the Kendrick brothers don't feel the need to insert the word "God," "Christian," or "Bible" into every one of the characters' sentences. Because this is absent, the characters can carry on with being just that - characters in a film about one person's desire to change hi sold practices and become more morally good.
Yet Flywheel does still have some issues it needs ironed out. For one, the disposition becomes too sunny at times, especially with the ending, where everything goes from possible calamity to just a happy ending in about a minute and a half. Just when the film is seemingly trying to disregard shortchanging simplifications it tacks one on at the very end of the film in a way that is almost unacceptable. However, the one thing that is present here - as it would also be in the Kendrick brothers' financial home-run Fireproof - is the slow, gradual change that our leader character must go through. Both Flywheel and Fireproof (though the first one better than the latter) show change in a slow-progressing manner and not an instantaneous change like some films have the tendency to do. With this, the film doesn't seem to shortchange and simply seems like it's trying to enlighten.
Flywheel may not be polished in terms of production values, nor perfect in its representation of events, but it is a solid start for a Baptist Church turned film company to make and produce above-average Christian films for a clearly demanding and willing audience. The film has just enough relatability and ideology to appeal to its core fanbase, but also has the ability to be at least enjoyed and maybe even appreciated by the irreligious demographic, like myself, who look at films like this as a way to connect with another group of people. For that regard, the film succeeds on a level all its own.
Starring: Alex Kendrick, Janet Lee Dapper, Tracy Goode, and Treavor Lokey. Directed by: Alex Kendrick.