Finding Purpose: The Road to Redemption is written, directed, and stars John Reign as a former vet who fought in the Balkans and who's now caring for his developmentally delayed brother (Tom Stoops) along with his wife Skye (Dawna Lee Heising). After John gets a terminal cancer diagnosis, and one of his friends from the war passes and leaves him with some money and a motorcycle with a side car, John decides to go on a road trip to give back to some of the families of the men who served with him, plus patch things up with his estranged daughter, who doesn't know he's her dad. Will he get the redemption he seeks before he dies?
This was an earnest attempt at an honest, feelgood movie, and with that in mind, I want to use my review to give it the proper respect it deserves. I liked the idea of this story, and I liked how he used a lot of non-actors to give it a more down-to-earth feel. By the same token, I think Reign betrayed the feeling he was going for in a few areas. First, poor Dawna Lee Heising's character is put through the ringer. She swims in a pond and gets leeches on her. Then she's in a boat on that same pond with John, and he absentmindedly tips the boat so she falls in. After that she gets sprayed by a skunk, and then for good measure, a snake crawls up her pajama pant leg. All because she's supporting her husband and going on this trip with him. There's also a scene where they go to a wing joint that looks like a pretty rough place, and she says multiple times "I don't feel comfortable with this," and he insists on them going in anyway. I'm not sure how that's supposed to endear ourselves to John, both as the character, because this is how he treats his wife; but then as a filmmaker, as this his how he treats the character of the wife. In addition to that, the element of the estranged daughter seemed to come out of nowhere, and maybe I missed the mentions earlier in the film, but I feel like it's something that could have been sprinkled in throughout the film so it didn't feel so grafted on. I saw people online who killed this movie, and I saw people giving it a 10 our of 10, but I think the reality, as in most cases, was somewhere in between.
I could tell this was a passion project for John Reign, and it felt like everyone involved got what he wanted and were as invested in what he was trying to do. I think film making like that is what this site was meant to celebrate, but by the same token, I think it's important to give as honest a take on the film as the honest attempt that was made to make it. One of the things about the passion project is it can veer into the vanity project quickly, which is something we've seen a lot of on this site, and might be why seeing that it was Dawna Lee Heising's wife character that was put through the ringer instead of John's character was such a red flag. We normally see this kind of vanity thing in an action film. Maybe a Seagal or Van Damme gets to beat everyone up and get the girl; instead here, John Reign gets to observe unscathed while his wife gets leeches on her from swimming in a pond. Had these things happened to John instead, it would have made his character more endearing. On the other hand, do we want to see someone who's dying of cancer getting sprayed by a skunk? So maybe no one gets sprayed by the skunk or bitten by leeches then?
The one place that I thought really worked was how John illustrated the bond his character had with the people he served with. It transcended the standard "thank you for your service" approach we see in a lot of movies about war veterans, and gave us something really unique. I also liked the way he demonstrated how that bond was felt by the generations that followed them, as he interacted with the kids of the people he served with; but then also the generations before when he visits the mother of one of the men who died in his unit. He tries to explain how her son died a hero, to which she responds that if her son had been a coward, she'd still have her son. I don't know that I needed more of that kind of scene, because I think one of those scenes was powerful enough on its own; I think it was more that when that scene comes after Dawna Lee Heising gets sprayed by a skunk, it's maybe hard for me to switch gears.
One thing I didn't know about this film until I looked it up on IMDb when I started writing this post, is that this is a sequel. The first film was just Finding Purpose, and it followed John as he dealt with PTSD after his time in the Balkans and he loses his developmentally delayed brother to the state. I don't know if seeing the first one would have changed how I felt about this film, just because I think the issues I had with it were still the issues whether I learned more of the backstory first, but also I think what I liked still would have been what I liked too. The one area that I may have gotten a better sense of was his relationship with the social worker who checked in on him and his brother early in this movie. I don't know if the estranged daughter was brought up in that one too, making it perhaps feel less of a tacked on thing here.
Finally, this is more of a general concern I have with screeners. Don't get me wrong, I always feel appreciative when someone comes to me to screen a film for our site, as it's been a part of this DTVC experience that I never saw coming when I started everything, and the ability to help get the word out on an indie production is something I love being able to do; but these large watermarks in the screeners reminding us that the film is not to distributed illegally are getting excessive. I get it, when you've poured not only your heart and soul into a project, but so have all the people helping you along the way, you want to protect your creation as much as you can; by the same token, these things can be obtrusive to the overall watching experience. Does it have to be a static watermark? Could it be a periodic crawl that rolls along the bottom of the screen? Something that doesn't interfere with my ability to watch and enjoy the film.
And with that, let's wrap this up. This can be rented for a dollar on Prime right now. I don't think that's a high price to pay for supporting an indie filmmaker. One word of caution though: IMDb lists this as a 90-minute runtime, but when I watched the screener I was given the link to, it clocked in at 100 minutes.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10332260
And if you haven't yet, check out my novel, Chad in Accounting, in paperback or on Kindle!
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