At the heart of the story, the story is about faith and love.

Rating: 8/10 (19 January 2005)

This movie is really about a man's faith and his love for his family when confronted with one crisis after another while in isolation. Mel Gibson's character must deal with a crippling loss and the story is about his recovery from it. Mr. Gibson seemingly invests more of himself in this role than in any previous role he has performed. He appears defenseless as the movie starts and, while he and his family are under severe but subtle attack as the story progresses, the family's strength is entirely based on a reliance on each other and on an unspoken yet unrelenting faith in each other. The Director has shown in this and his other movies that are clearly a product of his vivid and poetic imagination that the theme of the movies he makes, much like the movies prominent New York directors make, are set in the same locale, here Pennsylvania, but always about spiritual and transcendent topics. In "The Sixth Sense" it was a universal and eternal love, while here it is faith under attack and a strength in those we care most about. Outside events, deaths, abandonments, and seeming isolation can destroy faith but the individual can choose in the final analysis to look for faith, to seek faith, and to find it in the searching. Mr. Gibson's character finds what faith he thought had abandoned him and he finds it closer than he ever imagined it. This movie is excellent in following the Gibson character's pilgrimage to a new and stronger belief in himself, in his family and in his faith.