Judged as a Movie
After working a double shift Simone Burner (Brandy Allison) just wants to get home for a nights sleep as he will be waking early to start work all over again. But on the way home she is harassed by Patrick Walters (Ben Davies - New Hope), the son of a prominent local business man, who ends up shot dead, a crime Simone says she never did it. With Patrick's grandfather wanting Simone arrested for the murder, the Chief of Police has Detective Avery (Angelita Nelson) go after her to dig up her past so it will be easy to have her prosecuted for the murder. Fortunately for Simone lawyer Jack Evans (Erik Estrada - Uncommon) is willing to take her case.
As a movie reviewer sometimes I get annoyed, not by a movie but by the reviews I browse which seem to have been written with some sort of agenda. Sadly this tends to be the case when it comes to Christian movies as whilst you get those who won't even give a movie a chance because it is a Christian movie there are those who feel the need to praise and support a movie purely because it is a faith based movie rather than judging it as a piece of entertainment. Sadly this is the case when it comes to the movie "Virtuous" as I have read some reviews which praised this modern take on Proverbs 31 and were frankly a little over the top in their praise.
Now here is the thing with "Virtuous" there is a central storyline surrounding the murder of Patrick Walters with the detectives going after Simone because of a less than glorious past but one she has turned her back on. It is a simple enough storyline which has been used in other types of movies before and it connects nicely to lawyer Jack Evans who has some past issues of his own he is dealing with. But alongside this we have other storylines going on, a church going woman who is bullied by her husband, a news woman who sees the murder as a major story and a feather in her cap. There is even an opening involving some sort of military action and kidnapping. The trouble is it means "Virtuous" is too all over the place and an utter nightmare to follow which in this case less would have been a whole lot more. Yes it tries to be clever to link these seemingly unlinkable stories together but it is too ambitious.
The over complexity of the story, subplots and characters is not the only issues with "Virtuous" as the acting is also all over the place. On one hand you have Eliot Sloan as detective Thomas and he has a naturalness about his performance which is highly watchable. But then you have Marc Crandlemire as Preston Walter, the grandfather, and sadly his performance is too over the top and it contributes to the movie's issues. This inconsistency really puts a downer on "Virtuous" as there are some above average performances for a Christian movie.
What this all boils down to is that "Virtuous" could have been a very powerful movie for a Christian audience, especially a female one, but with acting issues and a sense of being over ambitious it drags it back down to being a just an okay movie.
