The Grace Card

A Christian film about grace and forgiveness, The Grace Card tackles prejudice, loss, and grief. The death of a child 17 years ago filled Mac's heart with anger and bigotry and crippled his relationship with his wife and youngest son. In his job as a policeman, he's paired up with Sam, a black officer who's also a part-time preacher and whom Mac dislikes intensely. Sam has also just received the promotion Mac thinks he deserved himself. The difficult partnership affects each man and his family in very different and significant ways. Sam struggles with the conflict between his desire as a minister to love and accept everyone, and his intense feelings of anger and even hate toward his fellow officer. That struggle almost turns him away from his calling as a preacher. A crisis on the job threatens to decimate what's left of Mac's family and brings the conflict between Mac and Sam to a climax. Just when the situation looks like it might destroy both men, a few well-chosen words and a seeming coincidence reveal that God has made Sam's and Mac's paths cross for a reason. What's more, their interaction with one another causes both men to experience a personal and spiritual growth that neither could have anticipated. The expressions of bigotry in the film are hard to stomach, the sermonizing may be off-putting to some, and the events are sometimes quite predictable, but the portrayal of a city torn in half by racial prejudice is compelling and the message that forgiveness, rather than justice, offers the best solution is certainly worth considering. --Tami Horiuchi