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THE THIRD MIRACLE Send This Review to a Friend
Films that involve grappling with questions of religious faith don't usually interest me very much unless they rise to a particularly high artistic level, as in the case of Ingmar Bergman's classic "Winter Light." However, the fine performances by Ed Harris, Anne Heche, and Armin Mueller-Stahl and director Agnieszka Holland's earnest, straight-forward approach to John Romano's screenplay based on Richard Vetere's novel make "The Third Miracle" interesting if not earth-shaking.
Ed Harris plays Father Frank Shore, who has the challenging job of checking out reports of miracles for the Roman Catholic Church, which usually turn out to be worthy of easy dismissal. But Harris is undergoing a crisis of faith and desperately needs something to justify his renewal of the beliefs that drove him toward the priesthood in the first place. He has been living as a lay person among the downtrodden, and now he encounters the issue of whether an apparently selfless woman, who recently died and is being talked about as saintly and the basis of a miracle, should be recommended for that exalted status. The situation is complicated when he meets the tempting Roxanna (Anne Heche), the woman's daughter, who is bitter and angry toward her supposedly saintly mother because she had abandoned her.
A fierce battle develops in the official hearing that occurs in the investigation of the alleged miracle at the core of the drama. Passionately arguing against further consideration of the case for sainthood is the powerful Archbishop Werner (Armin Mueller-Stahl), but Shore's investigation leads to startling information that harks back to World War II.
This is not a film likely to make a believer out of a non-believer, but it has a quality that holds one's interest. A Sony Pictures Classics release.
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