BIRTHRIGHT OUTLAW Star Lucas Black Talks Faith, Family and Freedom
By Cooper Dowd, Movieguide® Staff
Hollywood star Lucas Black, best known for roles in blockbusters such as TOKYO DRIFT and 42, recently announced a new faith-focused movie, BIRTHRIGHT OUTLAW.
Scheduled for an Oct. 13 release on Great American Pure Flix, Black hopes that his latest movie will encourage viewers to seek out truth, fight for their families and trust God more.
Black plays a preacher named Jeremiah Jacobs, who is happily married with a daughter. However, when his wife’s shrouded past catches up with their family, Jacobs must find the strength to not only fight for his family but also forgive.
“Yeah, so BIRTHRIGHT OUTLAW is a Western full of adventure,” Black told Movieguide® in a recent interview. “This family is living a good life, and then their daughter gets kidnapped, and then my character ends up realizing that his wife hasn’t told him the whole truth about her past. He has to make a decision to stand up and fight for his family and fight for his marriage.”
Black added that at the heart of the gritty adventure is a story about how truth can bring restoration and hope to a broken situation.
“It’s a unique story of this woman’s past that is tormenting her. She feels shameful, but she has hope that she can live a different life,” he explained. “It’s powerful. I hope it’s one that everyone can enjoy. I feel like the man can enjoy it. It’s a Western. And so, as a father, we had to fight for our families today and fight for our marriages. And so that’s pretty much the theme and why I chose to do it.”
The LEGACY PEAK star added that he hopes BIRTHRIGHT OUTLAW will encourage men and fathers amidst a culture that often disparages God’s design for a father and a husband.
“I think God created men with that innate instinct to protect and to provide,” he explained. “Today, we’ve got it made here in America, but you see a lot of different ideas or ideologies. The enemy is a master deceiver. He’s a liar, and he’s here to kill, steal and destroy. What matters to us most as mankind, as humans, are our relationships with other people. If the enemy can separate us, then he can cause more havoc. So I think as men, we need to recognize that there is a spiritual enemy out there that’s trying to divide my relationship with my wife and my children.”
“My job, I feel like for my family, is to be present in their lives, and then to have that sacrificial love that our Heavenly Father has for us,” he added. “He has that sacrificial love for us.”
Another major theme in BIRTHRIGHT OUTLAW is the pursuit of truth, something Black says is a very relevant topic today.
“I think the next generation is really yearning for what is the truth,” he said. “And there’s all different ideas out there. And they’re available easily today at our fingertips, right with technology. So as a husband and a father, I want to be grounded in God’s word and try to point my family in the direction of truth. My character actually displays that in this movie, which I think is pretty neat.”
While it is following in the footsteps of the family-friendly adventure LEGACY PEAK, Black said that BIRTHRIGHT OUTLAW was made more gritty to appeal to the male audience.
“It can be adventurous and action-packed at the same time and have a positive message that points them to Jesus,” he explained. That’s what I like about this story. Pretty much most men I know they love Westerns. You know what you’re gonna get. There’s a good guy, and there’s a bad guy. There’s gonna be some gunfights, there’s gonna be some shooting.”
“I feel like the contrast between those movies is just more raw and gritty, in BIRTHRIGHT, which it should be, you know, because this a Western and you’ve got the contrast between this woman who has had a extreme rough past, and then becomes a new creation in Christ Jesus.”
Ultimately, Black said that he hopes BIRTHRIGHT OUTLAW points people to the truth that Christ sets us free from whatever we have done in our past.
“Martha, she is hanging on to this lie that if my character really knew the truth about her, that her husband wouldn’t love her,” he said. “What’s unique about this story is, even though there’s a lot of things going on that we might say are bad things, God kind of orchestrated them in a way that this undealt with sin in her life, she hasn’t felt totally forgiven of, has to come out.”
“We’re told in Galatians 5:1 that it is for freedom’s sake that Christ came and set us free. So that we no longer had to be in bondage, a slave to sin. And you see that in this movie very clearly. And it’s amazing that you get to experience that through the journey of these two characters, the husband and wife,” he added.
Check back soon for Movieguide®’s full review of BIRTHRIGHT OUTLAW, starring Lucas Black and releasing on Great American Pure Flix on Oct. 13.
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