Tenderness and kindness seem so rare in movies, and increasingly so in real life, too, enough that it feels remarkable when we see it, and it moves us in a special way. A Little Prayer is a small story, but an important one that reminds us how powerful it can be simply to treat people with care and love.
David Strathairn is Bill, who runs a sheet metal business with his son, David—both men are veterans, and David is having a difficult time readjusting to life outside his deployments. David and his wife, Tammy, live with Bill and his wife, Venida, and we see that everyone cares very much for each other. But Bill begins to suspect his son is having an affair, heartbreaking for Bill both because he’s a man who appears to value commitment and integrity, and because Tammy is such an important part of their family. But we also can’t know what’s going on in other people’s lives, and everything is always more complicated than it looks.
Also complicated is that David and Venida’s daughter, Patti, shows up with her own daughter to stay with them after yet another falling out with her husband, who seems to be a real piece of work. Patti is outspoken and brash, and she injects some extra volume into a house that tends to the quiet side. There aren’t world-changing complications or revelations here, except that we see through Bill’s kindness toward Tammy that, in a real way, he has changed her life. Bill’s far from perfect himself, and we get the idea he can be a bit controlling, or at least has been at times in his life. But he does care.
Strathairn is always a true gem, and he brings a feeling to Bill that he brings to a lot of his characters, one that wins us to his side because of his sincerity. A Little Prayer is far from a polished movie, staged basically and sometimes clunkily, but this is one of those cases where you give it a pass simply because of how valuable the surrounding feelings are. Whatever else we do, we can be kind.
A Little Prayer is available on VOD.
