Terri Blackstock’s If I Run, on Lifetime

Dr. Richard Kimble had to have a lot of faith to keep chasing the one-armed man week after week on The Fugitive. Casey Cox has little faith, at least not the religious kind, but she finds herself in a similar position. However, as she scrambles to clear her name, she slowly starts to absorb the faith of unexpected allies in Michael M. Scott’s Terri Blackstock’s If I Run, based on Blackstock’s Evangelical novel, which premieres tonight on Lifetime.

When Cox stumbles across the body of her best (but to her, platonic) friend Brent Pace, she immediately goes on the lam. She knows it makes her look guilty, but she suspects crooked cops were involved. Pace had been investigating the unjust corruption allegations that ruined her late policeman father’s career. Supposedly, he had uncovered damning evidence. Consequently, Cox cannot trust anyone in law enforcement.

However, she might be able to trust Dylan Roberts, but she does not know that yet. Ironically, Roberts is not yet a member of the Shreveport police department, but Det. Gordon Keegan enlists the Afghanistan veteran as an outside investigator, as sort of an audition, to track down Cox. Roberts happened to be the late Pace’s best friend in high school, so the bereaved family trusts him. Roberts would indeed make a fine lawman, but he still struggles with his untreated PTSD.

Yet, despite his nightmarish memories, Roberts still maintains his faith. So does Miss Lucy, an older woman Cox meets on the bus to Atlanta, even though her beloved granddaughter Laura remains missing for well over one year. Indeed, Miss Lucy turns out be a godsend, because she offers “Grace Newland” (a.k.a. Cox) a place to stay, without any inconvenient background checks.

While Roberts investigates Cox’s case, Cox inadvertently finds herself looking into Laura’s disappearance. Cox makes much quicker progress, but there isn’t much she can do about it, given her circumstances. That might seem like a contrived plot twist, but Scott (a Lifetime movie veteran) keeps the film largely grounded and believable. When the Evangelical themes emerge, they do so in credible ways, related to the characters’ travails and their resilience dealing with them. They are noticeable, but they are not cringe-inducing (assuming you are relatively accepting of Christian themes, in the first place). The film also leans into its Red State roots, taking the action from Shreveport to Durant, Oklahoma, and then down to Atlanta.

Chief of War, on Apple TV+

King Kamehameha I was the Garibaldi or Charlemagne of Hawaii. He unified the Islands, but he was a King, so apparently, we must remove his statue from Congress’s National Statuary Hall, because “no kings” is the new motto of the righteous, right? Regardless, Keawe-Ka’iana-a-Ahu’ula (commonly referred to as Ka’iana) was a big part of Kamehameha’s campaigns, at least until he wasn’t. Their relationship was complicated, as viewers soon glean from creators Thomas Pa’a Sibbet & Jason Momoa’s nine-episode historical drama Chief of War, which premiere today on Apple TV+.

Like Dom Toretto, “family” is everything to Ka’iana. He once served as the Chief of War for King Kahekili of Maui, but he tired of the ruler’s bloodlust, so he and his family—wife Kupuohi, brother Namaki, sister-in-law Heke, and his loyal dude—Nahi led to Kauai, where they are treated like lowly refugees. At least, they are no longer party to Kahekili’s cruelty, until the King summons them back to Maui.

Reluctantly, Ka’iana once again leads Kahekili’s army, during Maui’s time of need—except the circumstances are not exactly what the King led him to believe. Horrified by their complicity in Kahekili’s atrocities, Ka’iana’s family once again flees Maui. This time, the find shelter in the Kingdom of Hawaii (a.k.a. “The Big Island”), just as a succession battle erupts. Keoua succeeded his father as king, just as he expected. However, the late monarch willed Hawaii’s war god-idol to his nephew, Kamehameha. Essentially, that was like cleaving the Commander-in-Chief duties from the office of the President of the United States. Keoua takes it as a rebuke, which indeed it was.

As the civil war unfolds, Ka’iana’s family aligns with Kamehameha, but it will be an uneasy alliance. However, Ka’iana might not even get that far. While escaping Kahekili’s army, Ka’iana resorts to a death-defying cliff dive, after which an English trading vessel fishes him out of the ocean, on their way to the rough-and-tumble Spanish-Filipino port city of Zamboanga. Ka’iana will get quite an education there, on subjects like guns.

Time will tell how the indigenous Hawaiian community feels about the depiction of famous chiefs like Kahekili and Keoua. For those coming in without any preconceived notions, the series hums along quite briskly as a big, bold, violent historical epic, very much in the tradition of Mel Gibson’s before-scandal films.

Indeed, Chief of War represents an unusually cinematic streaming series. The Hawaiian Island backdrops look stunning and the battle scenes are spectacular. Although Sibbett, Momoa, and cowriter Doug Jung often cast Westerners in villainous roles (especially with respects to the Spanish slave trade), the series itself is much less concerned with the colonialism than the tribal warfare enveloping the islands.