Tue, 16 Apr, 2024

Movie Review: Unconditional

By Barsha Dahal

Have you ever loved anyone unconditionally? Your parents, your friends or your lover? Unconditional love means loving a person with no ifs, buts and howevers.. You love without any conditions, without any expectations and without any doubts. The movie unconditional depicts such love. This is the real life story of Joe Bradford called papa Joe. Samantha Crawford (Lynn Collins) is the other leading character. The movie opens up with a tragic beginning with Samantha, whose husband gets killed. This movie is all about the consequences of racism, misunderstanding, hatred, forgiving, serving, hopelessness, tragedy, finding a motive to live and simply unconditional love. What would you do when your most beloved person gets murdered? No doubt at first you would try to give him/her justice and punish the murderer. What if you failed to provide him justice? Either you will live and deal with grief or slowly let the pain swallow you. Samantha does falls in the latter category. There was only one piece of evidence available, that the killer wore a red hoodie and left behind a mechanic's rag. Police stopped the investigation. She could not find any reason to live because her husband was everything for her. He was the person of her dream. He was her happiness, love, god, faith and life. Her world became dark. Thus, she decides to take her own life. But it is said that nobody has the power to end their life until it is the right time. While she tries to kill herself, the scream of a child stops her. She saves the small girl Keisha who just had an accident and takes her to the hospital. At the hospital, Samantha comes across her childhood friend, Joe Bradford. The movie takes a turning point there. Joe Bradford works with “at risk” inner city kids without caring about his personal life. He and his wife used to serve the community children, provide them food and spend time with them. He is called “Papa Joe” by those children. Joe is physically challenged due to a potentially fatal kidney disease. But for him more than his health issues those helpless children are precious. His aim is to spread lesson of humanity and unreserved love among those children. On the other hand, Samantha sees a man who resembles her husband's murderer. He is a neighbor of Keisha’s. She investigates herself. At last she gets to know the fact that her husband was not killed by him. She always thought about taking vengeance. She had forgotten to laugh, smile, play and remain happy due to the feeling of hatred and she had neglected her life. I loved this movie but I was disappointed with the way revenge is presented here. Without knowing the whole fact how can anyone hate anybody? In this world there are many people who find satisfaction in killing others. While there are also some people who live for others, laugh when others are happy and simply search meaning of their satisfaction in others’ success. If you cannot be that great then at least do not hate blindly. Hate will kill you inside each and every second and it will not let you breathe the air of life. Hope will rise again from the ocean of dissatisfaction. Sun may hide itself in the lap of black cloud but still sun lies there and will soon let itself free from those clouds just to brighten your life. Everything will be messed up, there are days when you will lose all hope but don't worry, and you are feeling the pain just because you are alive. If you are alive then there is always the next chance to bring color to your life. Samantha realized tragedy is not the end of her life. It is the new beginning with new hope. She got motivated by the way her friend Joe is working with those children. She found the lost hope somewhere in the eyes of those children, she found the meaning of God. Again I must say the way Samantha recovers from the pain and hopelessness, taught me a lot. It is said  you will learn by your experiences or watching movies. It was strong and appealing enough to enlighten my soul. Life is love, love is god, god is faith, faith is hope and hope is simply happiness. Watch this movie and be ready to get a new perspective on life. Happy watching!! :)