Miracle Man (2013)

The year was 2013. It started on a Tuesday and ended on a Tuesday. Not the same Tuesday, but a Tuesday all the same. The Boston Marathon was bombed. James Avery, better known as Uncle Phil from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air passed away. There were 40 deaths in a hostage crisis at a natural gas facility in Algeria. Some good things happened too. Ariel Castro was arrested and the three women he kidnapped were released after a decade. A 3D printer created the first living lab-grown ear. And Miracle Man was released to the public.

What is Miracle Man? Ted Jordan directed a movie about Jason Crawford (Seth Gandrud), a carpenter trying to make the world better, one good deed at a time. He built houses for people who needed them, and he preached the good word to an audience whenever they wanted to hear it. Satan (Ted Kraft) didn’t like that and tasked two demons (Greg Joseph and William Connor) with seducing Jason to the dark side.

The best way to discuss Miracle Man would be to discuss specific moments within it. There will be spoilers for Miracle Man coming up. Pretty much every scene in the film had something ridiculous going on. Sometimes it was the dialogue. Sometimes it had to do with the camerawork. There were many, many things that made Miracle Man a special film. There’s no better way to get into it than through the dialogue of certain scenes.

“My name is Jason Crawford.”

Miracle Man opened on some narration that introduced the main character to the audience. The name Jason Crawford was important because of the initials. J.C. His initials were shared with Jesus Christ, the son of God. Jason was the modern Jesus. He was a carpenter, building houses. He spoke about God in front of an audience. He even had followers like his best friend Les (Michael C. Alvarez). Plus, he was literally the son of God. He spoke directly to his father in the film.

“Pretty boy is coming to save the day.”

It didn’t take long for Miracle Man to delve into some strange territory with its sets. After the introduction scene with the narration, the movie transitioned into a bar scene. The bar was clearly a table placed in front of a green screen. The next scene was even stranger with Jason approaching two men who were attempting to abuse the bartender in an alley. The assailants and the victim were in a real location. There was a garage behind them. When it cut to Jason, however, he was placed in front of a green screen that was showing an alley background. His approach didn’t even have him move. The camera, instead, zoomed in on him while the background stayed in the same exact position. This type of camera and background work was utilized frequently for anything that didn’t take place in someone’s home.

“We have to take advantage of his manhood.”

Throughout Miracle Man, Satan and his demons tried to seduce Jason into a life of sin. They wanted him to work with them instead of for the good of God. The first plan that they tried was to convince him to work as a builder for a corporation. Jason didn’t like corporations and turned them down. He would rather work for the people who truly needed his help. Then the demons tried to… They took him to Las Vegas and stood him on a roof looking over the city. That didn’t do much. Their final plan was to kill his best friend, Les. That almost worked. Everyone in Les’s life blamed Jason for not being there to help Les. Jason managed to resurrect Les right before the movie ended, showing that he would never be Satan’s puppet.

“Father, I could do nothing without you. Thy will be done.”

This line of dialogue may sound inconspicuous, but it led into something important in the movie. It was called Miracle Man. Jason could perform miracles. Immediately after this line of dialogue, he turned water into wine. He was at a wedding reception. All the alcohol was locked in the back room of the church. Jason’s mom (Suzanne Brown) suggested that he use a miracle. He approached the numerous water pitchers and began creating alcohol.

This wasn’t his only miracle. There was the aforementioned resurrection of Les that closed out the movie. Bringing someone back to life is a fairly large miracle. That one was basically playing God, which was fitting of Miracle Man. There was a miracle near the beginning, when he saved the bartender. The two men who tried to assault her were frozen in their tracks by a touch to the head. Plus there was some faith healing at the meetings that Jason would hold. Miracles were all over the film.

“I know who put you up to this… And I demand that he get behind me right now. Do you hear me Satan?”

Jason Crawford was arrested by the Phoenix police department when some kids were caught dealing drugs in the parking lot outside his meeting location. They thought that Jason was involved in dealing drugs to minors. He was locked up in an interrogation room while questions were thrown at him. His assumption, which may have been right, was that Satan was behind the dealings and the arrest. Jason couldn’t stay there, so he performed a miracle where the police were distracted for a moment and he disappeared from their station.

“Hey! What’s the matter with you? Are you nuts? Buddy, are you trying to kill us both?”

There was one scene in Miracle Man that came out of nowhere and could have probably been removed from the movie without changing a thing. Actually, there were a few scenes like that. This was one of the most notable. A mom couldn’t find her daughter. Her daughter was riding a bike down the street. Jason saw her then had a vision that a man was going to hit her. He sped up and put his car between the man’s car and the girl’s bike. The man got out, furious that Jason was driving like a reckless maniac. Then he saw the girl and the realization hit. Things flashed back to ten seconds earlier when he slammed on his breaks to avoid hitting Jason. Not sure why the flashback needed to be there, but it was.

“We gotta get you a woman!”

The final thing that will be brought up is the character Martha (Kristina Sabbagh), the step-sister, maybe, of Les. She was introduced about halfway through the movie when Les went to fix the sink at her house. She was taunting him about not having a girlfriend, as the quote said. She had an accent from somewhere international.

Later in the movie, when Les died in a car accident, Martha confronted Jason. She told him that he should have been there when they needed him. He could have saved Les’s life. She then went off to a lake and stared over the water while a voiceover spoke about her troubled life. This detour didn’t do anything to move the story forward. All it did was pad the runtime to make Miracle Man longer than it needed to be.

 

Miracle Man was a crazy ride from beginning to end. It was a religious tale about the son of God. Satan tried to seduce him to evil, but he would not go. The people around him knew he was the son of God. The police took him to the station, and he teleported out. His friend died and he brought him back to life. He turned water into wine. And through all that, there were greenscreened backgrounds, bad performances, and terrible dialogue. It was everything that a bad movie could be.

Sometimes, a bad movie comes along that encapsulates everything that a bad movie could be. 1959 had Plan 9 from Outer Space. 2003 had The Room. 2010 had Birdemic: Shock and Terror. And 2013 had Miracle Man. Each of these movies, and many more like them, highlighted the magic of bad movies. They could be poorly made. They could fall apart under any form of dissection. But they were magical in how bad they were. They got people to watch them. They got people to learn from their mistakes and create better things. Most of all, they entertained.

There were a few notes to come out of this post:

• The Room (week 25), Birdemic: Shock and Terror (week 100), and Plan 9 from Outer Space (week 375) were mentioned at the end of the post.
• Have you checked out Miracle Man? The director put it up on YouTube, so you could check it out there. If you dare to. Tell me what you thought about it. You can find me on Twitter or in the comments.
• If you have any suggestions for movies I should be checking out, feel free to let me know. You can tell me about them on Twitter or in the comments. I’ll likely toss them into the schedule.
• Head on over to Instagram and check out the Sunday “Bad” Movies account. There’s stuff going up there almost every day related to the movies that have been covered for this blog.
• Happy Easter. I covered Miracle Man today because of the religious connections. Next week, there are no connections. I’m just watching a movie to watch it. It is a movie known as the only Hollywood movie to feature capoeira from beginning to end. It stars Mark Dacascos. That movie is Only the Strong. It will be coming up next Sunday, so be sure to come back. I’ll see you then.