{"id":268215,"date":"2025-11-07T17:35:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T17:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/268215\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T17:35:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T17:35:10","slug":"inspiring-drama-about-battle-for-oil-rich-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/268215\/","title":{"rendered":"Inspiring Drama About Battle for Oil-Rich Land"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJust in case the violent events portrayed in Martin Scorsese\u2019s \u201cKillers of the Flower Moon\u201d weren\u2019t 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 \u201cSarah\u2019s Oil,\u201d a more family-friendly movie that nonetheless offers a similarly cautionary history lesson. Propelled by newcomer Naya Desir-Johnson<\/a>\u2019s 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<\/a>\u2019s fact- and faith-based drama is as thoroughly predictable as it is irresistibly uplifting.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt 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 \u201cno good for anything but tornadoes and snakes.\u201d But Sarah, inspired and supported by Rose (Sonequa Martin-Green), her deeply religious mother, insists that \u201cGod gave me ears to hear\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tUnfortunately, Devnan soon informs Sarah and her parents that there\u2019s no oil on her land. Unsurprisingly, he is lying through his teeth.<\/p>\n

\n\tEnter 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\u2019s situation, and agrees to take over the drilling. It helps that the aforementioned oil company left all of its equipment behind \u2014 something Bert should have recognized as a sure sign that Devnan and his minions would soon return with a tempting offer.<\/p>\n

\n\tSure 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 \u2014 for a while, at least \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tOf 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\u2026<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSarah\u2019s Oil\u201d soft-pedals the graphic violence \u2014 the one killing of a major character occurs mostly off-screen \u2014 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 \u2014 though he immediately apologizes any time he makes an insensitive verbal faux pas.<\/p>\n

\n\tLevi 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 \u2014 almost as a deep as the oil beneath Sarah\u2019s land. He\u2019s 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 \u201cthe part where Jesus was describing all the fishing and loafing and stuff.\u201d) But he also is compellingly convincing as he grapples with moral conflicts in the movie\u2019s third act.<\/p>\n

\n\t(A nice touch: Sarah obviously is smarter and more well-read than Bert, and just about everyone else in the film, so he\u2019s visibly anxious about being up to the task whenever he tries to pull anything over on her.)<\/p>\n

\n\tFor all that, \u201cSarah\u2019s Oil\u201d 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 \u2014 at one point, a ruffian take a shot at someone\u2019s pet dog \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe period detail is impressive, the storytelling is engrossing, and the overall impact is pleasantly enjoyable. Don\u2019t be surprised if favorable word of mouth enables \u201cSarah\u2019s Oil\u201d to reach far beyond the customary target audience for faith-based entertainment. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just in case the violent events portrayed in Martin Scorsese\u2019s \u201cKillers of the Flower Moon\u201d weren\u2019t enough to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,123367,75,337,123368,123369],"class_list":{"0":"post-268215","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-cyrus-nowrasteh","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-naya-desir-johnson","14":"tag-sarahs-oil"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}