Just in case the violent events portrayed in Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” weren’t enough to convince you that Oklahoma was a perilous place for people of color with claims to oil-rich land in the early 20th century, we now have “Sarah’s Oil,” a more family-friendly movie that nonetheless offers a similarly cautionary history lesson. Propelled by newcomer Naya Desir-Johnson’s perfect-pitch performance as Sarah Rector, an 11-year-old Black girl who firmly believes there is an abundance of black gold beneath property she has been bequeathed, director Cyrus Nowrasteh’s fact- and faith-based drama is as thoroughly predictable as it is irresistibly uplifting.
It begins in 1913, when young Sarah, thanks to her status as a descendant of the Muscogee Creek Nation, is granted under the Treaty of 1866 nearly 160 acres of uncultivated land in Glenpool, Okla. Initially, the acreage is dismissed as “no good for anything but tornadoes and snakes.” But Sarah, inspired and supported by Rose (Sonequa Martin-Green), her deeply religious mother, insists that “God gave me ears to hear” oil beneath the surface. Her father Joe (Kenric Green) is a tad more skeptical, but agrees to help his daughter make a deal with a local oil company executive, Jim Devnan (Garret Dillahunt), to make a preliminary exploration of the property.
Unfortunately, Devnan soon informs Sarah and her parents that there’s no oil on her land. Unsurprisingly, he is lying through his teeth.
Enter Bert Smith (Zachary Levi), a silver-tongued wildcatter who appears to be more successful at coaxing rich widows out of their money than actually finding oil. Along with Mace (Mel Rodriguez), his Mexican friend and business partner, Bert takes an interest in Sarah’s situation, and agrees to take over the drilling. It helps that the aforementioned oil company left all of its equipment behind — something Bert should have recognized as a sure sign that Devnan and his minions would soon return with a tempting offer.
Sure enough, Devnan does indeed reappear, around the same time Sarah and her family learn that two Native American children were killed during a land dispute not so far away in the state. But Sarah remains resolute, Bert tamps down his desire to make a quick buck — for a while, at least — and the situation starts to draw national attention, thanks to the involvement of a white civil rights attorney and a Black reporter from up north.
Of course, Sarah and her mom continue to believe that God is on their side, even after the family home is attacked by oil company thugs and a reliable ally winds up on the wrong end of a shotgun. And you know what they say about the Lord moving in mysterious ways…
“Sarah’s Oil” soft-pedals the graphic violence — the one killing of a major character occurs mostly off-screen — but it repeatedly and effectively stresses the dangers Sarah, her family and Bert face in a time and place when the law offered little or no protection for Black folks (or, for that matter, whites like Bert who might be viewed as sympathetic to them). In fact, director Nowrasteh and his wife and co-writer, Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh, are realistic enough to reveal that even Bert is not entirely racially enlightened — though he immediately apologizes any time he makes an insensitive verbal faux pas.
Levi hits all the right notes while playing Bert as a charming rogue who surprises no one more than himself when he discovers a streak of decency deep inside himself — almost as a deep as the oil beneath Sarah’s land. He’s at his most amusing whenever Sarah scolds him for his lack of religious faith. (Asked where forgiveness is preached in the Bible, he stumbles through a vague reference to “the part where Jesus was describing all the fishing and loafing and stuff.”) But he also is compellingly convincing as he grapples with moral conflicts in the movie’s third act.
(A nice touch: Sarah obviously is smarter and more well-read than Bert, and just about everyone else in the film, so he’s visibly anxious about being up to the task whenever he tries to pull anything over on her.)
For all that, “Sarah’s Oil” is by no means a simple story about heroic white saviors and downtrodden colored folks. (Native Police play a major role late in the game to even the odds for the good guys.) And while the villains are only a few steps short of B-movie caricatures — at one point, a ruffian take a shot at someone’s pet dog — the characters who are on the side of the angels, or working their way there, are allowed a fair degree of complexity, which the well-cast supporting players emphasize.
The period detail is impressive, the storytelling is engrossing, and the overall impact is pleasantly enjoyable. Don’t be surprised if favorable word of mouth enables “Sarah’s Oil” to reach far beyond the customary target audience for faith-based entertainment.