Holy Relics: A Focus on the Family Movie Review

Every Wednesday in Holy Relics, Martyn Jones explores artifacts unique to Christian subculture.

This week’s Holy Relic is a found poem made of lines taken from Focus on the Family’s Plugged In movie reviews.

* * *

In the future, things are bleak.
Profits are up.
Folks are choked.
One would assume that fatalities would arise from these sorts of encounters,
but it’s hard to be sure.

Cars, trucks and planes crash. Elevators fall.
Huge warships fire on each other and crash into buildings.
A man has his fingers chopped off. (We see them fall to the ground.)
A man gets his foot caught in a trap.
He smashes a computer server with a bat.
He also hammers several human guards with a frying pan.
Bibles are seen and sworn upon.
We see vomiting, and hear racial and gay slurs.
It was easier to be a good guy.

Annie’s potential employer encourages her
to snort some cocaine with him.
They stop having so much sex.
They don’t regret having children.
Annie tries several times to do a gymnastics trick
that culminates in sudden intercourse.
In fact, she was pretty nice.
“Bye-bye, bikinis,” she says.

John is injected with a drug that renders him unconscious.
A small group of twentysomethings seems to be high.
We see the hole in his flesh, the blood-streaked face
and more blood pooling on the ground.
Charles smokes a cigar.

Carver smokes a cigarette.
Shane and Liz kiss.
Logan lights up a cigar on a couple of occasions.
A woman swallows pills with a swig of wine.
Men drink from a bottle of booze while testing weapons.
Someone brandishes a large dildo as a weapon.
A flaming bus speeds down the street.
Gustave smokes a cigarette.

God’s name is misused once or twice.
God’s name is combined with “d‑‑n” once.
Jesus’ name is misused once; God’s is exclaimed a time or two as well.
God’s name is misused at least 10 times (once with “d–n”).
Jesus’ name is abused once.
God’s name is misused at least 30 times, two or three times with “d–n.”
Jesus’ name is abused twice.
Somebody uses “bloody” as an expletive.
Jesus’ name is abused repeatedly as well.

A bird, trapped in a net, is nearly killed by soldiers.
With love, true love, no one is beyond saving.
Another plummets from an incredible height.
Another is run over.

Our lives are filled with complications and complexities.

* * *

All of the above was taken from one of the following Plugged In reviews:

Persecuted
22 Jump Street
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Purge: Anarchy
Sex Tape
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Maleficent

Image via Focus on the Family, http://www.pluggedin.com/