ATTHEMOVIES
shuts down and thousands, including many of his best players, are moving away. To top it all off, Coach Harrison is then tasked with coaching the cross-country team, which has only one runner, and she is asthmatic. “He’s frustrated,” Alex says, “and he feels like he has no opportunity to win.” Coach Harrison must navigate these new obstacles in his journey, while he also wrestles with his identity, a core theme of the movie.
ALEX KENDRICK, ALONG WITH HIS BROTHER STEPHEN, HAVE CREATED FIVE WELL-KNOWN FILMS IN THE CHRISTIAN FILM INDUSTRY, including Fireproof, Facing the
Giants and War Room. Their sixth film, Overcomer, is coming out August 23. I talked with Alex Kendrick about the film. It’s been 15 years since the Kendrick brothers started filming Facing the Giants. “It did more than I ever thought it could do,” Alex says, “but Overcomer is a step up in quality, a step up in production value, and it’s framed with a message that I think today’s audience needs to hear.”
The Story Coach John Harrison (played by Alex Kendrick) has just finished a great season with his basketball team, but his dreams of a state championship crumble. The town’s largest manufacturing plant
“The movie follows this 15-year-old girl and the coach as they both learn more about their identity and what it should be placed in,” according to Alex. “Society today talks about your identity coming from your feelings or your circumstances or what others think about you. We would say with this movie that the Creator gets to define His creation. “Coach learns that the foundation of his identity is in the Lord; it changes his perspective on everything else. His identity is not in being a successful coach; his value comes from the love God has for him. The same thing goes for the young runner, Hannah Scott. She learns God loves her and has a plan for he, and her life is not summed up in her circumstances or her feelings.”
A Decisive Moment Alex describes the moment he decided that identity would be the core message of the film: “In 2011 I was watching my kids run a crosscountry race. And I’m watching all of these dads cheering them on. It struck me that running a long cross-country race is similar to our life as a believer. The Apostle Paul talks about it: ‘Run in such a way that you may win’ (1 Corinthians 9:24, NASB).
-continued on p. 1615.
