Plot Summary
In Golden, Colorado, local business owners are tired of homeless people and low-income housing, so they convene a meeting at their local business gathering to discuss how they are going to run all the people they don’t like out of town. A homeless drunk drifter has become the central focus of the town’s conflict, but the new pastor in town takes an interest in the drunk’s well-being. He convinces a local police officer who knows most things that are going on to take him around one night so that the pastor can see what is going on in the town he moved to. From that experience, he is inspired of how to help the hurting all around him by following Jesus’ commandments.
Production Quality (2 points)
After a very low-quality production like A Perfect Chord, Kingdom Sight Studios has shown concerted production improvement in 2nd Greatest. This improvement is evident in good video quality and camera work, as well as good sets, locations, and props. However, there are a few moments of odd camera angles, shaky recording, and poor lighting, but this is not enough to completely detract from the overall quality. The soundtrack is mostly intriguing, but the editing could use some upgrading as there is a lot of somewhat loosely-associated content throughout the film. Moreover, on the whole, this production is above average and meets the basic standards necessary for modern films.
Plot and Storyline Quality (1 point)
As this movie’s plot line is based on a true story, there are a lot of good ideas contained within it, but the many storylines that are included are a bit too disorganized to drive the message home properly. A lot of the characters need further deepening, and even though some of them have some adequate flashbacks, their dialogue and personalities are not quite there. The stunted growth of the characters is likely a product of the many random and seemingly unrelated subplots that are included in the film. Not enough focus is placed on the main homeless character, even though he has a potentially great back story, and this seems to be a product of not being able to go deep enough with the characters. This problem also produces a cheesy villain (if we even need a ‘villain’ in this type of film) and an overly fake ‘perfect’ pastor character. Basically, there was plenty of good ideas to work with here that needed a bit more refining before being released.
Acting Quality (1.5 points)
There are several inconsistent performances throughout as some cast members are skilled while some are not. Sometimes the emotions feel forced, but other times, they are fine. Similarly, line delivery is natural while other times it is too unnatural. There doesn’t seem to be any consistency with acting coaching, unfortunately. As a whole, while the acting of this movie is a bit uneven at times, there are enough good performances to keep this section average.
Conclusion
Basing movies off of true stories is almost always better than your average inspirational fodder, but when the story is mishandled, its full impact is stunted. Kingdom Sight Studios made some great strides in 2nd Greatest, especially with production quality, and the real stories of the characters were good ideas to use, but we needed to see more of what the real people were like besides being pawns in a plot. Thus, like many films, retaining a better screenwriter would have done wonders. Also, it wouldn’t have hurt to upgrade the acting coaching. As a whole, it is always good to see improvement from a studio, so it will be interesting to see what they do next.
Final Rating: 4.5 out of 10 points
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