Faith and "fore" walk hand in hand -- sort of -- in this soft-centered, faith-based drama, based on a self-help novel by David L. Cook. The film follows young golf pro Luke Chisholm (Lucas Black of "Friday Night Lights"), who has a mild meltdown in the middle of a tournament, followed by seven days of perspective-patching among the God-fearing folk of rural Texas.
Robert Duvall plays sage old rancher Johnny Crawford, who takes the golfer in and makes him ponder the great questions of golf -- "How could a game have such an effect on a man's soul?" Luke absorbs life lessons and swaps wisecracks with the locals. And he meets the fetching Sarah (Deborah Ann Woll), who is "trainin' to be a horse whisperer."
If golf is "a good walk, spoiled," then "Seven Days" is a potentially good golf movie stuck in a water hazard -- as in "watered down."
In flashbacks, we see the (mildly) domineering dad who set the stage for Luke's (mildly) bad day. The movie doesn't supply much tension as it works its way right down the middle of the fairway toward the predictable "big game" finish.
