jsteiger Having found some of Schrader's previous work interesting, and recognizing the potential in the movie's cast, I went in with high hopes.The hopes were not justified. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY. You'll leave the theater shocked and angry, unless your admiration for Schrader's previous work overrides your critical faculties.SPOILERS FOLLOW.The movie begins in promising fashion. Superb, yet subtle set design, marked by excellent, muted use of color and dim lighting to create a somber, depressed atmosphere. The leads are well cast.Unfortunately, the writing is extremely weak, and the entirely unnecessary, completely unbalanced and unsubtle, smack-you-over-the-head "environmentalist" message quickly carries us into cartoon territory.Nothing stands up to close examination. The priest learns that one of his parish members has "a problem." His wife is pregnant, he is obsessed with environmental pollution and nihilism, and doesn't want her to have the baby. After an awkward first meeting, during which we discover that the priest encouraged his son to go to Iraq where he died, and that his wife left him he agrees to meet with the young man a second time. In between, he discovers that the young man has constructed a suicide vest. At this point the narrative goes completely off the rails.It is clear that the young man is violently suicidal. Anyone with any sense of morality would immediately demand that the young man be taken into protective custody. Instead the priest, who has no known expertise in high explosives, carries the vest out to his car! Did anyone watching this film not notice that there was no "instructions manual" with the suicide vest? Nobody with an IQ above 70 would grab a packet of high explosives under these circumstances.The young man finds out that his suicide vest is missing, and shotguns himself to death. The priest, who consumes high quality whiskey like coffee, is extremely ill, and over the next few days finds the time to become an environmental extremist AND have a bizarre levitation-tryst with the comely wife of the suicide victim. The wife, played by Amanda Seyfried, reads some of the dumbest lines I've ever heard with earnest seriousness. One can only imagine the dozens of giggling outtakes generated during the filming of this scene. Totally unbelievable on any level.There is a "reconsecration" ceremony in the works. The priest plans to protest the destruction of the environment (I think---his motivation is a complete mystery) by blowing himself up (along with a bunch of parishioners, one would presume) with the suicide vest. Exactly how he has divined the correct operation of the vest is a complete mystery. Why he would want to kill numerous parishioners (or at least ruin their Sunday best clothing with a rain of his body parts) is an even bigger mystery.At the last minute, he changes his mind and wraps himself in barbed wire, at which point Amanda Seyfried enters his office and they start passionately kissing. Bam, the screen goes black, and the credits roll to an ominous, rumbling musical piece.Crazed environmentalists might somehow find an encouraging and/or meaningful message in all this. Personally, I found it to be incredibly arrogant and insultingly incoherent. The sensational violence in Taxi Driver and Raging Bull at least had some rational connection to a messages of alienation, and the character development in both movies was superb. In First Reformed, the character development is extremely weak and simply doesn't support the characters' behavior. What, precisely, motivates Amanda Seyfried to feel passion for this physically wrecked, horrendously depressed, nasty man? We saw him, in a previous scene, crush the feelings of his former lover Esther (played beautifully by Victoria Hill) as if she were some kind of insect.What about the heavy-handed use of environmentalist concern as the main motivation for the young man's suicidal depression? Schrader trots out the the "97% of climate scientists agree" canard. The study that yielded the 97% figure has been debunked so thoroughly that nobody with a shred of intellectual honesty uses it. Our rivers and streams are actually far less polluted now than they were 30 years ago. Yet, in short order, one man has blown his own head off and another is preparing to blow himself up over the issue. This movie had the potential to be great. A superb cast, some intriguing issues, a fine cinematographer. Schrader simply blew it with a lazy writing effort. His fans will find a way to praise this by simply ignoring his failure. Don't be fooled.

bevpropst The Earth is doomed for destruction by corporations. I hope this film encourages change in preserving our only home.

Johnny Soory Aseel First of all, I must say that I only review movies that blow my mind or waste my time, and in this case, it is definitely the latter. I'm guessing this movie was meant to be thought provoking in regards to the serious environmental issues our world is suffering from. However, the poor writing, directing and its weak plot put your mind to sleep. It is extremely boring and flat in terms of dialogue and storytelling. After what happened in the forest, I thought the movie will take-off, but it did not. So, if the "thought provoking message" came towards the end of the movie, I guess I missed it because I fast forwarded it and watched some of it on mute while talking on the phone.

Zorica If you have lost your faith in good cinema, seek no more. You surely know Hozier's Take me to church? Well, here it is Toller's (read Schrader's) imagination of a holy place. Even if you don't care about the environment, you must have someone you care for, and this is what this movie's about. Till some time ago, I had very little understanding for the environment activists. Especially for the ones which were labeled to behave like fanatics. I wanted my home, my city, and my country clean of course, but only for aesthetics's purposes. My mind has changed thankfully, but I still have a lot to learn and to reform. As the movie title, we all have to reform, even if it is too late. No matter what your religion is - the message is universal and applies to all types of human solidarity and coexistence. Conserving the planet, no matter how hard and big deprivations await, is the core to every struggle for being good. You want gender , racial, religious equality-then you first must have a place to live to fight the battle. This movie just couldn't do more justice to the cause of environmental preserving. I love how it calls for the religious leaders to step in, where the politic ones chose not to. How it throws light over the numerous establishments which still allow the presence and growth of criminal deviations of the corporations. Mindblowing dialogues (even if you are not religious or ecologist - you'll love them), excellent cinematography and superb acting, are just great addition to the wonderful script. It feels like european cinema. I just can't understand the bad reviews in this section. Please watch this film. I hope that it will inspire you to change, as it did for me, more than any documentary or news I've seen on this topic - which only an astonishing piece of art can achieve - that is, not only to entertain the viewer, but to make him or her contemplate on the subject, and want to make a change.