The Apostle (1997)

A traveling evangelist (Robert Duvall in an Oscar nominated performance) in the South has a very un-Christian side and in a fit of drunken temper, he attacks his wife's (Farrah Fawcett) lover (Todd Allen) with a baseball bat and goes on the run. The lover dies from his injuries but the preacher attempts to redeem himself by building a church in a Louisiana parish. Written and directed by Robert Duvall, the film gets high marks for its portrayal of a complex religious man struggling to follow the Lord's path while his human nature undermines him. However, the film is overlong and sometimes it feels like we're stuck in a holy roller Pentecostal meeting with no exit in sight. A little goes a long way and a good editor could have excised some of the fat like the Billy Bob Thornton sequence which could easily have been eliminated without hurting the picture at all. On the plus side, Duvall doesn't condescend to the film's believers nor to the evangelist's genuine fervor. He's no Elmer Gantry con man, he's the real thing. With Miranda Richardson, June Carter Cash and Walton Goggins.