October Positivity: Revelation Road 3: The Black Rider (dir by Gabriel Sabloff)

Posted on October 28, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Eric Roberts is not in Revelation Road 3.

I was hoping that he might be, even though his name didn’t appear in the credits. Quite a few cast members from the first two films return for the third film. David A.R. White is back as Josh McManus, the former super soldier who now drives his souped-car through the wastelands of America. Bruce Marchiano is back, credited as the Stranger though we all know he’s actually Jesus. (Since Marchiano appeared in all three films, I can only assume the Revelation Road films all take place in the same cinematic universe as The Encounter films and Sarah’s Choice.) Brian Bosworth shows up briefly.

But there is no Eric Roberts. Not even Eliza Roberts appears in this film! It’s a shame and they are both missed.

However, Kevin Sorbo does show up.

Kevin Sorbo plays Honcho, a bandit leader who lives in the wastelands and who is worshipped by those who follow him. Honcho occasionally speaks with an Australian accent. Occasionally, the accent slips or disappears all together. At first, I thought this was a case of bad editing, bad dubbing, or maybe Sorbo not really being that into the character. However, there’s actually a rather clever moment in which Honcho tells Josh that he’s not actually from Australia. He just speaks with the accent because it impresses his followers. Without the accent, he’s just some guy who used to work at a gas station. With the accent, he’s a warlord.

It’s a moment that made me laugh, largely because it’s true. People love and fear accents. If you’ve got a posh British accent, most Americans will assume that you’re planning a heist of some sort and that Sylvester Stallone or Harrison Ford is somewhere nearby, trying to stop you. If you’ve got an Australian accent, the assumption amongst Americans is that you can survive harsh conditions, handle your alcohol, and jump out of a plane without a second thought.

However, Sorbo’s fake Australian accent also pays a sort of homage to the Mad Max films. The Revelation Road trilogy was obviously envisioned as being a faith-based version of the Mad Max films, with David A.R. White cheerfully stepping into the somber shoes of Mel Gibson and Tom Hardy. Using Mad Max as a model for a faith-based apocalypse film actually isn’t that bad of an idea. Indeed, Gibson’s style of beatific madness opens up the original Mad Max trilogy to a similar interpretation. Unfortunately, Revelation Road 3 is at time a bit too faithful to the Mad Max films, to the extent that it struggles to establish an identity outside of the films that inspired it. That’s one reason why Kevin Sorbo’s character stands out. He’s a character who genuinely surprises us.

As for the plot of Revelation Road 3, it finds Josh being sent on a mission to find The Shepherd (Robert Gossett), a mysterious figure who is gathering together a religious flock in the desert despite the fact that the new world government has outlawed things like religion and individual freedom. While Josh’s wounded companion waits in a town ruled over by Mayor Drake (James Denton), Josh searches the desert and occasionally sees a mysterious rider on a horse. The film mixes action and theology and the results are definitely mixed, with a few well-done chase scenes mixed with a lot of scenes of people talking. That said, at its best, The Black Rider achieves a sort of desolate grandeur.

October Positivity: Revelation Road 2: The Sea of Glass and Fire (dir by Gabriel Sabloff)

Posted on October 27, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Eric Roberts is in this!

That, in itself, isn’t a surprise. Eric Roberts was also in the first Revelation Road. He plays the same role in the 2013 sequel. Roberts is Sheriff Jenson, the not particularly religious sheriff who has to deal with a town that’s gone mad in the wake of the Rapture. Over the course of one night, dozens of people (including Jenson’s mother) vanished as their souls flew into the air. Jenson isn’t sure what happened but he knows that there is panic in the streets and that there is also a crazed motorcycle gang to deal with. In the first film, Roberts was onscreen for maybe two minutes. He gets closer to five minutes in Revelation Road 2 and you know what? it’s always nice to see Eric Roberts!

As for the rest of the film, it picks up where the previous one ended. Josh McManus (David A.R. White) is trying to get home to his family while also resisting the urge to become a killer. It’s not easy. Flashbacks reveal that Josh was actually brainwashed by the CIA to be a remorseless killer. He’s haunted by a mission in the Middle East and the amount of people he killed over there. He’s joined in his drive home by Beth (Noelle Coet), a teenage girl who has been sent by Jesus himself (Bruce Marchiano) to help guide Josh in the right direction. Pursuing Josh is the fearsome Hawg (Brian Bosworth), a motorcycle gang leader who is haunted by his own personal tragedy. Hawg’s daughter, Cat (Andrea Logan White), struggles to understand her father’s anger and hatred.

Revelation Road 2 is a definite improvement over the first film. If the first film seemed to take forever to go nowhere, Revelation Road 2 is all about Josh’s determination to get back home. Once he starts that car up, nothing is going to stop him. If the first film seemed to be a bit too eager to show off Josh’s talent for killing people, Revelation Road 2 features Josh trying to hold back on his murderous instincts. Flashbacks to Hawg’s past life bring some much-needed nuance and context to his actions and they keep him from being just a one-dimensional villain. I would dare say that Bosworth actually gives a legitimately good performance in this film.

Though the film wears its influences on its sleeve (Hi, Mad Max!), Revelation Road 2 is still a surprisingly well-done action film.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

October Positivity: Revelation Road: The Beginning of the End (dir by Gabriel Sabloff)

Posted on October 26, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Eric Roberts is in the 2013 film, Revelation Road: The Beginning of the End.

Of course, he’s only in it for a few minutes. In fact, if you blink, you will miss him. He plays Sheriff Jenson, who is in charge of enforcing the law in a small desert community. He appears long enough to tell salesman John McManus (David A.R. White) not to leave town. McManus has just killed three armed men who were attempting to rob a general store. The store’s owner (Ray Wise) invites him to dinner but the cops are curious as to how a salesman could be so proficient at killing people.

Revelation Road plays out over the course of one long night. A group of bikers, led by the fearsome Hawg (Brian Bosworth), are seeking revenge for the death of their compatriots. Meanwhile, Iran is pushing the world towards war. In a motel, a woman asks John for money. Lighting flashes. Lights flicker on and off. The Earth shakes. It’s a fearful time, largely because the world itself is coming to an end. A little over an hour into this 88 minute film, there’s a sudden blinding light and suddenly, a fourth of the cast vanishes. One person who does not vanish runs into a kindly stranger, played by Bruce Marchiano. Marchiano will be well-known to viewers of faith-based cinema for the number of times that he’s played Jesus. So, you can probably guess what’s happened.

Revelation Road ends with the promise of a sequel, which means that the film also ends with a lot of unanswered questions. It makes Revelation Road difficult to really review because it’s obviously meant to be a prologue to the actual story. I will note that Revelation Road is a surprisingly violent movie, at least by the standards of most faith-based films. Then again, most of the violence was in self-defense and the Bible itself is full of stories of violent men who found redemption. In fact, you could probably argue that it’s impossible to do an apocalypse movie that isn’t violent. We’ll just have to wait to see where this story is heading.

I’ll review the sequel tomorrow.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

October Positivity: Beckman (dir by Gabriel Sabloff)

Posted on October 21, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2020’s Beckman is one of the most violent faith-based films I’ve ever seen.

Usually, when a religious film is full of death and violence, it’s apocalypse-themed. The rapture has happened. The Anti-Christ is in power. All bets are off. Beckman, however, is not an apocalypse-themed film. Instead, it’s a John Wick rip-off, one in which the Wick-character also happens to be a preacher.

David A.R. White plays Beckman, a former contract killer who stumbled into a church and meets Rev. Philip (Jeff Fahey). Philip converts Beckman, baptizing him and showing him that even a viscous killer can be redeemed. (A Vietnam vet, Philip killed eleven people during the war and it still haunts his nightmares. Incidentally, Jeff Fahey deserves roles in better movies.) When Philip grows sick and dies, Beckman takes over as the church’s pastor. When Philip’s runaway niece, Tabitha (Brighton Sharbino), shows up at the church, Beckman adopts her as his daughter.

One year later, all Hell breaks loose. Gunmen working for rich cult leader Reese (William Baldwin, looking like someone cosplaying Alec for Halloween) storm the church and they kidnap Tabitha. Beckman snaps. He goes back to his old ways, leaving a trail of bodies throughout Los Angeles as he searches for Tabitha. The film becomes a cross of Taken and John Wick with a religious angle tossed in as well. Beckman kills but he constantly hears a voice in the back of his head telling him that he needs to reject his anger.

Beckman does indeed kill a lot of people and I have to admit that it bothered me a bit, just how casual the film got about killing. It made the film’s ending, with Beckman suddenly realizing that he doesn’t need to kill everyone, feel rather hollow. Reese is an Jeff Epstein-like madman who kidnaps teenage girls and makes them a part of his cult. He associates with human traffickers. And yet, when Beckman has a chance to kill him, Beckman suddenly realizes that he doesn’t want to lower himself to Reese’s level. Okay, what about all the people Beckman killed beforehand? I mean, if you’ve already killed 12 people, you might as well take out the worst of them all.

(It reminded me a bit of how Cecil B. DeMille would always be sure to include plenty of sin in the first half of his films so that audiences could enjoy themselves before the second half became all about chastity and redemption. The film portrays a countless number of deaths but still wants its message to be Thou Shalt Not Kill. It feels a bit hypocritical.)

Beckman takes a lot of its cues from John Wick and there are a few effective fight scenes. The film is also divided into chapters and there’s a lot of time jumps, showing that the filmmakers have, at the very least, seen at least one Tarantino film. But the film itself lacks the self-aware humor and the shameless style that made the John Wick films memorable. David A.R. White is not a bad actor but he’s better at light comedy than at killing people. The film ends with what appears to be the promise of a sequel but I’m not sure how many more people Beckman can kill while still claiming to be a preacher.