'Unsung Hero' review: For King & Country tells its own story

Cinematic memoirs can be a complex creative endeavor. Film is a collaborative medium and memoirs require a certain acknowledgment of the author's creation. Without that self-reflection, you can fall into murky and confusing territory. This space is where the new film “Unsung Hero” exists, which is billed as “For King & Country Film.”

If you don't already know the Grammy-winning Christian pop duo For King & Country, comprised of brothers Joel and Luke Smallbone, “Unsung Hero” will introduce you to their familiar folklore, if not their musical hits. The film is a biographical drama about the Smallbone family, a large brood from Australia who immigrated to Nashville in the early 1990s, following her father David's dreams of working as a promoter in the music industry.

“Unsung Hero” is co-written and co-directed by Joel Smallbone (with Richard L. Ramsey) and he also stars in the film playing his own father, who eventually managed For King & Country's musical careers, and Joel's sister Rebecca. Saint James. Her brothers work in the family business as managers, lighting directors and documentary filmmakers (all make cameos in the film), and there is a sense of positive collaboration among the tight-knit Smallbone family. This theme runs throughout the film and it makes sense that Joel would dedicate himself to telling his family's own story in such an intimate way.

Therefore, “Unsung Hero” is like a much more expensive extension of the camcorder home movies that serve as a recurring motif throughout. This is not just a musical biopic or a family drama: it is a presentation of a family narrative told and embodied by the family members themselves. A valid effort, without a doubt, but an important context when considering the work as a cultural product.

Joel Smallbone is a compelling actor, even if it's a bit distracting that he's playing his own father (he's described the experience as a “therapy session”). Joel is also a character in the film, when he was a child (Diesel La Torraca), while Daisy Betts plays Helen, the Smallbone matriarch and Joel's mother. Helen is, of course, the unsung heroine of this story, the heart and backbone of the family who insists on keeping them together while David makes one last attempt to make it big in the Nashville music industry. Betts is the emotional center of this film, her character tirelessly determined, keeping her spirits high as David's dreams are slowly crushed.

The family of attractive Australians arrives in the United States without a single piece of furniture in their rental house, and they curl up on beds of clothes while they get up with the help of a couple from their church (Lucas Black and Candace Cameron Bure). They clean houses and yards, clip coupons, and accept the charity that comes to them, reluctantly, from David.

While David battles the deterioration of his dreams, his daughter Rebecca (Kirrilee Berger) is just beginning to embrace her musical aspirations. But she can't pursue them until her father gets over his deep grief at being rejected by the industry. It takes him some time to understand the advice given to him by his own father, James (Terry O'Quinn), in Australia, that his family doesn't get in the way of what he wants. Rather, they are the way.

“Unsung Hero” follows a predictable narrative path of struggle and salvation, but it's not a traditional musical biopic: It doesn't start with a record deal, it ends with one. The focus is on his difficulties in getting that record deal, which is clearly what filmmaker Joel Smallbone cares about. It's not the success, the Grammys, or the stadium concerts, but the way they stuck together, pushed themselves, and allowed themselves to dream, all thanks to their mother, who never let David's challenges get in the way of David's imagination. their children.

It is a humble story, with the ability to inspire in its simple message of perseverance. But the film itself, as an artistic product, feels limited in its scope of observation, because the filmmaker has no distance from the material. Smallbone is a good actor, but along with Ramsey, he is a limited filmmaker. His visual style is drab at best and the narrative lacks the kind of self-reflection that could elevate this project. As it is, “Unsung Hero” feels more like band merch than a revealing family portrait.

Katie Walsh is a film critic for the Tribune News Service.