Midnight Clear

Not to be confused with Keith Gordon's 1992 WWII drama A Midnight Clear, the contemporary, spiritually themed ensemble drama Midnight Clear was directed by Dallas Jenkins, son of best-selling author Jerry B. Jenkins (the Left Behind series). The film follows the dead-end lives of several down-and-outers in the American southwest during one lonely and desolate Christmas Eve. These include a laid-off and homeless working-class stiff (Stephen Baldwin), a minister accompanying teens on a caroling route, an elderly woman alienated from her loved ones, a service-station proprietor with a noticeable absence of customers, and a mother and son en route to visit the family's brain-damaged, hospitalized patriarch. Slowly, deliberately, these lives begin to intersect, and those who initially felt hopeless and desperate find grace and redemption from their encounters with one another -- topped off by an affirming and uplifting Christmas Eve church service.