The Sure Hand of God (2004) User Reviews

Appealing actors in an above standard TV movie

[Pro Jury · 6/10 · 13 May 2005]

Molly Bowser is a very attractive woman (with a super sexy teen-aged daughter) doing the best she can to make ends meet after the death of her husband. But life is not easy. No one in her small town will give Molly a job because the women of the town fear Molly will take away their husbands. The place she rents is run down and needs fixing. So, Molly uses her sexy daughter to lure a handyman to work and repair her place in exchange for room and board. Molly's plan works too well as the handyman soon wants to bed and/or marry Molly's daughter.

Fearing that her daughter is going to be stuck in poverty, Molly arranges to have her daughter spend time with the richest young bachelor in town. This plan also works too well as Molly's daughter and the rich bachelor become passionate before a wedding is arranged. Things are quite a mess. Throw in an angry preacher and MONK's Bitty Schram to stir things up even more, and there you have a fairly watchable made-for-TV movie.

The Lifetime Channel re-titles most every film these days. THE SURE HAND OF GOD is titled SINNERS NEED COMPANY on Lifetime. If you are not expecting a 10-star epic production (or even a 7-star one), then check out SINNERS NEED COMPANY.

movie sermon about how awful Christians are

[FilmLabRat · 1/10 · 12 February 2008]

wow - if there was ever a "message movie," this has the most ridiculous caricatures of Christians I've seen yet from Hollywood - the font of Christian bashing.

I've never met any Christians like these clowns - and I've known literally thousands of Christians (and have been hurt by many and seen hypocrisy and countless atrocities - but far MORE acts of good will, honest, kind and ever-giving hearts). Beyond the obvious "Christians are mean-spirited, busy-body, judgemental kill-joys" theme, and the rest of the plot is a total cliché: feel-good, rich-boy-meets-poor-gold-digging-whitetrash-girl ...and they really fall in love, only to have him cut off by his rich father but they marry anyway and show THEM by living happily ever after. Never seen this story before.... ho hum. Acting is even overdone and unbelievable. While I endure many a boring, sappy movie, this one has nothing at all to offer - complete waste of time. skip it.

Typical Erskine Caldwell

[gatebanger · 7/10 · 12 May 2008]

Stepdad dies after spending what would have been his estate on bad poker hands, white trash mom decides to arrange for daughter to marry rich and the rest just follows along.

The casting was good, the acting was acceptable, for television, and the story kept moving. That's about all you can expect from TV these days. It's worth a couple of hours if you have nothing else to do.

I must confess to being confused by the review about the "evil Christians." It appears this guy has an ax to grind, and this isn't the place. I spent a bit of time in places such as where this story is set, and the woods are full of "Christians" like those in the film. Given Caldwell's father's vocation and after the way the author was raked over the coals early in his career by the forces of Christian Decency, it's little wonder many of his stories come off the way they do.

So bad it's fun

[WinterMaiden · 3/10 · 11 July 2008]

Well, holy moly, people, what do you expect? It's Erskine Caldwell. For those of you who know only the greatest hits from the literature of the 1920s to the 1960s, Caldwell's books "Tobacco Road" and "God's Little Acre" put white trash misbehavior on the map and helped determine the way Yankees saw white Southerners: depraved, ignorant, and crazy, and the stereotypes haven't necessarily changed.

I enjoyed seeing Gail O'Grady and Jennifer Morrison hamming it up as just the sort of depraved, ignorant, and crazy Southerners you expect from Hollywood. I didn't see the movie from the beginning, and can only assume from the bluesy chords on the soundtrack that the movie is set in the Delta, although that's not really Caldwell country. But, of course, where this sort of movie is considered, I wouldn't be surprised to see hillbillies, Cajuns, and the Florida Everglades all in the same film.

As for the portrayal of Christians-- Every character and character type in the movie was so broadly drawn that it was tempting to see it as tongue-in-cheek parody. Definitely a movie that is so bad it's fun.

Christian Bashing 101

[darrell_ · 2/10 · 15 November 2006]

This movie is a study in Christian Bashing. We have a "worldy widow" whose "christian neighbor" judges while forgetting her own sins including gossip, pride, and slander among many others.

Then there is the "brainless man of god", who also forgets about such Scripture as, "judge not least you be judged." While pastors can become isolated in their understanding of the world, Hollywood has to distort this to the point of bigotry, narrow-mindedness, and stupidity.

As for the pastor's wife...again an ounce of truth mixed in a ton of manure. A pastor's wife may be "pushed backed",on the one hand and "judged" by the congregation on the other...but what about the pastor and his wife who sincerely do their best to minister to a hurting lost world.

In the New Testament we see Jesus, the Pharisee Simon, and the women who anoints Jesus feet. Simon, representing religion instead of faith, is judgmental and negligent in his duties. Jesus reminds us that often those who need the most forgiveness are those who think they need it the least.

Back to the movie. Molly really tries to do the best for her daughter, while living with the "stigma" of being the local "Women at the Well" (again in Scripture). Could she have been a better mother...what parent does not wish they could have a handful of "do-overs" with their child? As for the daughter, Lilly, she loves her mother even if she does not agree with her. Molly puts her neighbor to shame when it comes to being humane.