The Ultimate Gift is one of the earliest releases from the Fox Faith department, announced at the end of 2006, for the release of faith-based films.  This one is more accessible to the wide audience as it does not wear its faith credentials on its sleeve (as, for instance, in the Baptist-church produced Facing the Giants which has an explicit, almost proselytising screenplay).

Rather, this is a moral fable.

James Garner plays a very wealthy oil and businessman who leaves minimal wealth to his sons and daughters (all materialistic, selfish and extravagant) and the widow of another son (she is a flighty socialite).  What he does do (and it is all presented on DVD so that the tycoon can speak directly after his death) is offer a chance to his disgruntled grandson who resents his grandfather for his own father’s death in Ecuador.  The grandson, Jason (Drew Fuller from Charmed) is a spoilt, insolent, self-centred, pleasure-seeking young man with no regard for anyone.  Taunted by his mercenary girlfriend, he succumbs to the temptation to try to find out what his grandfather had in mind for him.

The bequest is something akin to the labours of Hercules.  Jason is given tasks, step by step, which he unwillingly participates in.  But, as we know, ultimately they will have their effect on him and he will learn the value of the gifts of work, money, friendship, family, sacrifice… and of a life of value with values.

Early in his quest he comes across a precocious young girl in the park (who, for some unexplained reason, was also at his grandfather’s funeral with her mother).  The girl has terminal leukaemia.  She is played – with a self-determination and self-will that outshines the redoubtable Dakota Fanning – by Abigail Breslin (after she appeared in Keane and in her Oscar-nominated role in Little Miss Sunshine).  Her mother is attractive, common-sensed and not mercenary (Ali Hillis).

Jason’s quest takes him to dig post-holes for Brian Dennehy in Texas, to sleeping in the open in a park in Charlotte, to the hospital and to the mountains of Ecuador for an explanation of how his father died (and to be abducted for ransom).  The benign controllers of Jason’s destiny are played by veterans Bill Cobb and Lee Merewether.

There is religious language and feeling in the film but it is given a ‘worldly’ context which makes more impact than if it were presented preachily.  While this is a moralising story, it trusts in the impact of its story to move people.  (The director, Michael O. Sajbel, also directed the less successful story of Esther, One Night with the King.)

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