THIS is a cop movie with a difference.  Its main content is not policing although its setting in the Sheriff’s Department in a small Georgia town inevitably shows cops on the job. Minor misdemeanours.

Community issues. Traffic. Little organised crime.

“Courageous” arrived here without fanfare, which exercised my curiousity enough to choose it for review rather than some more blazoned film.

Its first third resembles a pilot introducing people and places for what its producers hope will become a low-budget daytime TV series about families but shy about revealing its true intentions.

The reality is a 129-minute-long religious feature, a framework of Christian spirituality and biblical fundamentals underlying a paean to moral and ethical values.

The deeper it delves into religious fervour, the more boring it gets. Its humour and its action passages are episodic devices linking low-key proselytising that rises to a final sermon.

It will do no harm. It is unlikely to persuade anybody to rush to church next Sunday. Its cinematic merits fall short of film school graduation exercise standards.

At Hoyts Woden