The Forge

Young Isaiah (Aspen Kennedy) is 19 years old and doesn’t know what he’s doing with his life. He’s directionless, aimless, breaks commitments and, worst of all, doesn’t seem to have much respect for anyone, even himself. He plays video games all day, borrows his mom’s car and then leaves her hung out to dry when she needs it back to run errands. He knows he’s got to grow up, but he doesn’t know how.

He’s given an ultimatum by his mom (Priscilla Shirer): He doesn’t need to go to college, but if he’s not going to go back to school, he at least needs to get a job. He applies for a job at a local factory that manufactures exercise equipment and, in filling out his application, mouths off to the company’s president, Joshua Moore (Cameron Arnett).

Instead of throwing Isaiah out on his butt, Joshua sees something in the young man he can relate to. Isaiah has an ager in himself that Joshua used to have. Isaiah’s anger is toward his father, who abandoned him after cheating on his mom. Joshua lost his son to a drunk driver. He forgave the drunk driver and letting go of that anger helped him grow. He takes Isaiah under his wing and shows him how to forgive, and how to grow into a man people can respect.

The Forge has a not-at-all subtle Christian faith agenda. There is much praying and crying and surrendering to God. I’m typically pretty easy on faith-based films. Though I, myself, am staunchly atheist, I understand the importance of faith, religion and the belief of a Higher Power. The Forge has a generally universal moral at its core, which is that we all have to grow up sometimes, stop acting like an idiot and get your life together.

My only issue is that, at two hours, the movie drags. Many of the same themes are repeated multiple times, for added emphasis, when once was enough. I’m not sure how many scenes we needed with Joshua delivering a powerful sermon to Isaiah, tears in both of their eyes, while the musical score swelled triumphantly as Joshua made some salient points. Reducing the run time by about half an hour would have helped things along.

The issue of the narrative being as long as it is, there’s just not a lot of conflict there. Not enough to necessitate such a long story. And I was fine with the film not having shoe-horned conflicts. I liked that the stakes were low. Isaiah’s confrontation with his father, for example, was not an endless dramatic mess. It was an internalized struggle. The way it played out, without ridiculous, over-the-top fighting, helped it feel more sincere to the character’s struggles.

By the end, everything will be wrapped up in a neat little package. No thematic curveballs will be thrown. And no expectations will be cleverly subverted. The Forge is the kind of movie you go into knowing exactly what you’re getting out of it and it’s very professional at what it sets out to do and ultimately accomplishes. It’s a decent movie, although one I suspect that the less I know about the makers behind the scenes, the better.

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray
The Forge is printed on a single Blu-ray disc housed in a standard case, which also contains a slip inside for digital redemption on services like Movies Anywhere. All special features are found on the single disc.

The Forge is far from a bad-looking movie. In fact, it looks quite good. Colors are nice and warm and focus is deep and sharp. Presented in 1080p HD video, The Forge looks better than anyone could possibly ask of it. The problem is, with movies like this, these modern comfort food films made with a low budget, is that they all have the same, generic look to them. Everything is overly bright, evenly lit and shadows only exist in the most dramatic of sequences. Technically, the presentation is flawless. There are zero issues. But it doesn’t have much personality, either. It all just kind of looks stagey and artificial.

Audio options include original English language track, French and Spanish dub tracks, all encoded in DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround. There is also a 5.1 audio description track in Dolby Digital 5.1. The sound mix was quite good. Soundtrack selection is pretty often, so rear speakers see a lot of regular action. The Forge loves itself some hip-hop/R&B, so your subwoofer will get in on the action, too. Music gets loud, but never too loud, and dialogue is always clear and favored throughout. Ambient sound activity isn’t too frequent—most of this movie is conversational, taking place in quiet rooms—but we do get some ambient surround sound activity, like the chatter of a crowded restaurant, or the machinery of the plant Isaiah works at.

The Forge comes equipped with a decent amount of features for fans of the film and fans of Affirm Films’ body of work and message.

• Audio Commentary – From Alex and Stephen Kendrick
• The Making of The Forge (HD 15:47)
• Discipleship in The Forge (HD 6:01)
• The Heart of The Forge (HD 4:54)
• Deleted Scenes (HD 13:18)
• Outtakes (HD 4:01)
• LifeWay Resources (HD 2:11)
• Previews

Like most faith-based films, your mileage is going to vary depending on the strength of your own faith. I thought The Forge was a decently made moral picture. It didn’t have many surprises along the way in its story, but its straightforward, no-nonsense approach was refreshing in that way. Audio/video performance was good to quite good and there was no shortage of supplemental features to entertain fans. All told, The Forge comes Recommended.