EXHIBITING FORGIVENESS

Here is the decision. Titus Kaphar — an acclaimed painter making his feature debut — has told a beautiful, poignant story that chooses to show rather than tell. It carries a strong Christian, biblical worldview: it exalts the power of forgiveness, the calling to be a good father, and it fills its scenes with Bibles, prayer, and honest conversations about grace and God's goodness. The acting is superb. This is a four-star film.

It also earns its R rating. There are more than 25 strong obscenities and profanities, including "f" words, "s" words, GD and OMG profanities, and — in the film's cultural context — the "n" word. Flashbacks depict the raw physical and verbal abuse Tarrell suffered from his drug-addicted father. A robbery turns violent. None of it is gratuitous, but none of it is easy.

So: if you are an adult, or a mature older teen with a parent's blessing, this is a rewarding, redemptive film worth seeing. If you are choosing for younger children, choose something else.

Tarrell is a successful Black painter who has built a good life for his wife and son. But the childhood he survived — with an abusive, drug-addicted father — still haunts him, and he pours that trauma onto his canvases.

His mother, Joyce, is a strong Christian who urges him toward prayer and Scripture. Then, without warning, his estranged father reappears, claiming a newfound faith and desperate for reconciliation. Tarrell isn't ready. What happens when a wound this deep is asked to forgive is the road this film walks.

Four stars, and here is why. Despite what its title suggests, this is a master class in subtle, beautifully paced storytelling that shows rather than tells how Tarrell struggles to forgive — a form that mirrors the art Tarrell himself makes and pulls you into his life with quiet power.

The acting is the film's glory. André Holland, John Earl Jelks, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor — as Tarrell, his father, and his mother — form a dynamic that is genuinely intriguing, each interaction revealing a little more about how these people see forgiveness, fatherhood, marriage, and hardship. The film never flinches from the abuse Tarrell endured, yet it explores all of it with compassion rather than sensationalism. The result is a strong, honest, and ultimately positive depiction of forgiveness — including the reality that forgiveness is rarely easy.

This film breathes Christian air. Its worldview is strong, biblical, and moral, and it says plainly what Scripture says: that fatherhood matters, and that forgiveness has real power. Bibles are opened, prayers are prayed, and characters talk openly about grace and God's goodness. Not every character comes to affirm the truths of Scripture — but those truths are discussed honestly, never mocked.

At the center is Joyce, a Bible-reading, praying woman who quickly forgives her husband and gently urges her son to do the same. Tarrell resists — he disavows his mother's faith and doubts his father's newfound one — and the film represents both the believing mother and the struggling son fairly and without caricature. That honesty serves the story well. The abuse is raw and authentic without being graphic, and the addiction is portrayed as the ruin it is.

The film is honest, too, about how hard forgiveness can be when the wound is a father's hands. Scripture never pretends otherwise — but it commands the harder road anyway: "bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive" (Colossians 3:13). That is exactly the road Tarrell is asked to walk.

Titus Kaphar has made a beautiful, four-star film about the hardest thing love ever asks: to forgive a father who caused real harm. It is honest, redemptive, and rooted in Scripture — and it is also an adult film, with harsh language and painful scenes. So here is our answer, the same one we opened with: worth the trip — adults only. Planning family movie night instead? Start with our latest family-friendly picks.