“I know what I believe,” says Rebecca Smallbone (Kirrilee Berger), a teenager defending her ability to write and sing pop songs, about halfway through the biopic Unsung Hero.
The audience has to more or less take her word for it, because while she will eventually become the Christian pop star Rebecca St. James, Unsung Hero doesn’t focus enough on Rebecca to give anyone a sense of her thoughts or feelings on much of anything. We’re left to assume that she simply shares most of her beliefs with the true subjects of the film: her parents, David and Helen. In the tradition of King Richard, where Will Smith played the cantankerous, determined, high-standards father of Venus and Serena Williams, the next step in biopic evolution apparently involves paying tribute to the parents who figure so prominently in certain success stories. This seems like a particularly appealing tactic for a faith-based movie like Unsung Hero. Call it Fifth Commandment Cinema.
Unsung Hero is Fifth Commandment Cinema without the benefit of Will Smith-level charisma to make the stubbornness and screw-ups go down easier. What it lacks in star power, it makes up for in astonishing levels of faux-piety and false modesty: Joel Smallbone, of the Christian musical act For King & Country, co-writes and co-directs a biopic starring himself, playing his dad David. As the movie tells it, David follows his dream as a Christian music promoter and, after taking a bath on an early-'90s Amy Grant tour (blamed vaguely on “the economy”), uproots the family and moves them to the United States to start a new record label with another artist. When they arrive, David learns that the deal has fallen through. Now the family is stranded in Nashville with a six-month visa, no jobs, and plenty of pressure to head back to Australia. David doesn’t want to give up, but he’s also not sure what to do next.
This may be why Smallbone plays his father with a constant expression of stricken nerves; with every new turn of fate, even some strokes of objectively fantastic luck, David looks as if he’s just learned that he was swindled out of his life savings. Facing a barrage of anti-Australian discrimination due to the family’s six children (with a seventh on the way) and alienating use of the word “knackered,” the Smallbone family—following a cross-country train trip so lengthy that Helen (Daisy Betts) appears to become several months more pregnant by the end of it—makes a go of it without a cushy music-industry job.
Relying on their faith and worth ethic, which is to say home-schooling and child labor, the family starts a lawn-care business to make ends meet. They also receive help from wealthy local couple Jed (Lucas Black) and Kay (Candace Cameron Bure, also an executive producer). Various behind-the-counter wage workers may be framed as vaguely forbidding and judgmental, but the Smallbones can count on the gracious charity of the rich for a leg up.
To be fair, David eventually bristles at this help, because he bristles at nearly everything. Thankfully, Helen’s ability to read almost anything as a manifestation of God’s blessings more than compensates for David’s sad-sack weaknesses. (“It’s a miracle—it’s like some kind of sign we’re supposed to be here,” she exclaims about a note from her mother that, when inspected by customs officials, unexpectedly helps them get into the U.S. despite their intention to overstay their visa.) Through the family’s perseverance, their prosperity gospel comes true.
If you’re looking for insight into what fuels the music of Rebecca St. James or For King & Country, Unsung Hero seems to find any detailed depiction of artistry or creativity untoward. There is God-given talent, there is the faith to pursue it, and there’s a very long roll call of the family’s successes appended to the end of this slender quasi-inspirational story. It’s hard to glean much inspiration, for that matter, when the movie’s hardships start to feel a bit like poverty cosplay. While David’s parents’ financial standings aren’t specified, they seem plenty comfortable, and the movie never supplies a particularly strong reason that the family must stay in the U.S. after David’s job offer falls apart.
Doubtless there is some interesting combination of craft, grit, and calculation that goes into making mass-appeal Christian pop, and members of the real Smallbone family could probably speak to that. But the ones who made this movie have demurred in favor of honoring their father and mother. Here, it's hard to shake the feeling that it’s the feel-good inspo they’re after, not the songs.
