I never heard of this film until it came to my attention on Netflix and I watched it. It was an amazingly well balanced film, similar to some stories that were in the news a few years back, where an adopted child is sought by his biological parents years after an adoption was assumed permanent, due to the father not having given legal consent. Reading the credits, I learned it was based on a novel by Karen Kingsbury, and after reading the other reviews here, learned it was released by a Christian company, which I was totally unaware of while watching the film. I am an agnostic, and lean toward atheism, but have loved some Christian films, like Treasures of the Snow, Fireproof, and To Save A Life. And while this barely touched on Faith, (Thankfully in my non-religious opinion), those who decried the changes from the book, (which I haven't read, nor probably never will), struck me as not liking the film for the very reasons that made it so good. That is, not portraying the parties in obvious colors, not making the biological parents totally unfit, at least at first, after Pepper's release from prison, and not portraying the adoptive parents as beyond fault, which raised this above the typical lifetime movie, in my opinion. In fact, when Barry Pepper reverts to some of his abusive behaviors late in the film, I was a little disappointed, because I didn't want the film to take the easy way out. And in some real cases in Ohio, the children were returned to the biological parents, which I think is very unfortunate when the child has lived happily for many years with the couple he or she knows as Mom and Dad. I wanted a happy ending, which I got, but I didn't want it to look so one-sided that the deck looked stacked. And as a non-believer, if a lot of Faith preaching is added, for me, it only detracts from the drama, and risks becoming corny and trite. If the film were a little livelier or faster paced, I would have given it a 10, but if it were like those who described the book as being, I would have given it a 5 at best.
Review of Like Dandelion Dust
