It was ideologically childish, creatively irresponsible, and cinematically insulting. She broke the story of a man who couldn’t be broken, and in the transcendental truths of life found redemption. If you can’t make a movie about THAT, you shouldn’t be making movies.

I have rarely looked forward to a movie release more than I did Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken. Zamperini is a hero, a national treasure, and happens to share two things near and dear to my heart: A faith in the one, true God, and the fight on spirit that is the heart of Troy (yes, in that order). He was from the same city I was born in (Torrance, California). The story of an Olympic medal winning track star who became a World War II fighter pilot who survived 47 days stranded on a lifeboat at sea before being taken as a prisoner-of-war by the Japanese army and ultimately freed is a pretty remarkable story. Angelina sort of told that part (let’s give her 20 minutes for narrative and two hours for blood lust torture porn). She got about 5-10 minutes in of his childhood and family life. And then the movie ended. Having spent 75 minutes more than she needed to on Japanese torture, she had to roll the credits. She managed to skip over 70 years of his life, like the years where he dived into abusive alcoholism, severe PTSD, and then went to a Billy Graham crusade, accepted the Lord, went back the next night, and devoted the next 65+ years of his life to a sober service to God. Louie believed in good and evil, and he spent his life seeking the former.

Jolie was given the blessing of making a movie based on a phenomenal book, about a phenomenal person. Jolie doesn’t believe Louie’s faith is relevant to this story, so she broke it out of the movie. She stuck to her dumbed-down Hollywood vomit about generic love, peace, and harmony rooted in the goodness of man blah blah blah. It was ideologically childish, creatively irresponsible, and cinematically insulting. She broke the story of a man who couldn’t be broken, and in the transcendental truths of life found redemption. If you can’t make a movie about THAT, you shouldn’t be making movies.

David L. Bahnsen, CFP®, works as a Senior Vice President in the private client group of one of the premier Wall Street firms.  He serves on the Blackstone Faculty of the Alliance Defense Fund and is a Cooperating Board member of the Center for Cultural Leadership where he is the Senior Fellow of Economics and Finance. This article first appear on his blog, The Bahnsen Viewpoint, and is used with his permission.