The Faith of Angels (2 1/2 stars out of 4)
“The Faith of Angels” is based on the true story of a ten-year-old boy who was lost for several days in an abandoned mine outside Tooele, Utah.
Director Garrett Batty’s effort doesn’t spend a lot of time getting off the ground. We are quickly dropped into a church outing with a group of fathers and sons who are camping in the mountains outside Tooele. Ten-year-old Joshua Dennis (Michael Bradford) is a little apprehensive about the adventure, but is assured by his father Terry (Kirby Heyborne) that he’ll be at his side the whole time.
The centerpiece of the outing is an abandoned mine that everyone is excited to explore. Initially all is fun and carefree as the boys pull pranks on each other in the darkness, but when part of the group decides to head back to camp early, Joshua gets mixed up in the transition, and winds up lost in the cave alone.
The majority of the storyline follows the events outside the cave once a search and rescue effort is launched to find the boy. We spend a little time with Joshua—who encounters a series of visions and spiritual experiences in his solitude—but mostly we trace the efforts of the searchers, and specifically the conflict between the county sheriff (Cameron Arnett) and a man named Skinner (John Michael Finley) who claims to have special expertise on the cave.
In a lot of ways, Skinner is the true protagonist of the film. We meet him separately, early in the film, on a fishing trip hundreds of miles away in Wyoming. Around the time Joshua goes missing, Skinner hears a voice that prompts him to return to Tooele, and when he learns that the boy has gotten lost in a cave he’s spent years exploring, Skinner feels compelled to get involved.
Even if you aren’t familiar with the story, the tone and style of “Faith of Angels” suggests that the question isn’t whether Joshua will survive, but more a telling of how he will finally be found. Though his screen time is limited, Bradford makes for a sympathetic character—practically an angel himself—and Finley is effective as a man who is conflicted about his role in the affair.
The tension between Sheriff Proctor and Skinner takes a while to unfold, and it’s interesting to note that it wasn’t invented for the script. In real life—as in the film—it took several days before Skinner was finally allowed to enter the cave himself.
It might have been more effective to ramp up the intensity of the circumstances—news clips over the final credits demonstrate a level of emotional resonance that some of the film’s scenes strain to match—and it might have been better to spend more time in the cave, creating the claustrophobic atmosphere that added to similar films like last year’s “Thirteen Lives.” But ultimately, “Faith of Angels” is a nice reminder that life’s trials can stretch us to the breaking point before offering resolution.
“The Faith of Angels” is rated PG for adult themes and tense scenes.