CineVegas 2009

GODSPEED is an intense, dramatic thriller set in the sublime light of Alaska’s midnight sun. Robert Saitzyk directs with adeptness and precision, turning the familiar framework of the revenge genre into a taut and complicated portrayal of a man’s descent into nightmare. Charlie Shepard is a modern-day faith healer, a man who claims that if you let go and believe, then his power to heal is very real indeed. Charlie ekes out a blue-collar existence from his “healing” sessions to support his wife and young son. But just as his business starts to fail and an old drinking habit comes back to haunt him, his family is brutally murdered by unknown assailants for seemingly no reason. Six months later, Charlie has abandoned his former life and moves through the summer days without darkness more like a ghost than a man. But then a mysterious young girl named Sarah shows up in town, looking for Charlie. Will she become the link to his family's killings?

Buoyed by Joseph McKelheer’s riveting performance and captured in luscious and sensual cinematography, GODSPEED explores faith, grief, and the violent nature that may exist in all of us — where man is as much at the mercy of his own mind as he is at the mercy of the vast Alaskan landscape.