When my family sat down to watch Soul on Fire—a biopic about a nine-year-old boy, John O’Leary, who accidentally sets his family’s house on fire in 1987—I’ll be honest, I didn’t know what to expect. I had never heard of John O’Leary before, and I admit that I’m sometimes wary of overtly evangelizing films. Too often, even well-intentioned Christian films can dispense less truth and more preachiness. However, within minutes of watching Soul on Fire, my children and my husband glanced over at me and said, “I know why you were asked to review this film. This movie was made for you.” And, I’ll be honest, they were right. So, if you’re wondering how the rest of this review is going to go: No, I didn’t find the film preachy and off-putting. I found it moving, heartfelt, and worth every tug at my heartstrings—and I suspect you’ll find it worth the watch, too (with, perhaps, a moment or two of justified schmaltz tying the plot together).
Soul on Fire begins immersed in John O’Leary’s 1980s childhood. There we meet a rambunctious boy who loves baseball, neighborhood pickup games, and his large, laughter-filled family. O’Leary has one more constant in his life, too: the voice of Jack Buck, the legendary St. Louis Cardinals broadcaster, echoing through the family garage. (My husband reminded me that Jack Buck is the father of today’s sportscaster Joe Buck, whose voice many of us know from game-winning Super Bowl drives and World Series home runs.) The first few minutes of the film are steeped in nostalgic joy—leaves falling, the crack of a bat, and laughter spilling from open doors. It feels like the perfect seasonal family watch.
It’s not an easy choice. It never is. But it’s the constant choice amidst suffering that makes life, love, and the worship of God a supremely radiant and countercultural act.
However, in short order, the rug is pulled out from beneath you. In an unthinking moment of childish imitation, the young O’Leary plays with matches and gasoline in his garage, copying older boys he’d seen at a creek bed near his house. Within seconds, he is engulfed in flames. His body is burned entirely; he runs, screaming. His older brother Jim—whom we just met moments before when he was mercilessly teasing John—rushes toward him without hesitation, lifts him up, and carries him to the family lawn, never thinking of the burns he might receive himself.
Then comes perhaps the most overwhelming—and beautiful—moment in the film. John, now writhing in pain, begs his little sister, Susan, to put him out of his misery. He asks her to grab a knife from the kitchen. Instead, she runs back into the burning house, filling cups of water again and again, and splashes them over her brother’s body, saving him from further agony. “Why is she doing this?” my daughter whispered to me as we watched. My response came instinctively: “Because she loves him. The little girl loves her brother. Water puts out fire, remember?” Likewise, love, in its own way, puts out suffering.
John O’Leary suffers immensely throughout the film, and the audience suffers with him. Doctors discovered that the burns cover one hundred percent of his body and advised his family that he had less than a one percent chance of survival. It is staggering to imagine John enduring such excruciating physical pain, or his loving parents suffering while watching their child undergo such trauma. Soul on Fire is an exquisitely pro-life film in its own way. It honors the gift of being alive. Every breath John takes, every act of love that keeps him alive, becomes a witness to life’s inviolable dignity. When he is first brought to the hospital, his mother, whom I sympathized with at every level, stands over her child’s gurney and tells him that it’s up to him now—that he must decide whether to fight, whether to live. And John chooses life. We see that choice play out again and again in the film. It’s not an easy choice. It never is. But it’s the constant choice amidst suffering that makes life, love, and the worship of God a supremely radiant and countercultural act.
As the film unfolds, we witness vignettes of O’Leary’s life—his recovery, college years, marriage, and maturing adulthood. The thread connecting them all is the constancy of love—especially the love of his father, Denny O’Leary, played with warmth, charm, and gravity by the show-stealing John Corbett. In one of the film’s most memorable moments during his college years, John’s future wife asks him what his parents said about his setting the house on fire. He shrugs, saying his father didn’t say much. But, in truth, what his father did say is everything. When nine-year-old John first woke up from surgery, his father leaned close and assured him, “I love you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
That line, as simple as it is, captures the message of the film, which is drawn from the heart of the Gospel. It testifies about the Father’s love for us: unconditional, undeserved, unrelenting. As St. Paul writes, “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20). Denny O’Leary in Soul on Fire becomes, in many ways, the image of the Father who forgives us even when we’ve set the house—this world we share together—on fire, as we so often do. Notwithstanding our stupid, reckless, unfathomable sins, our Father loves us anyway.
In Soul on Fire, it is not only John’s father who shows that kind of bountiful, fatherly love. St. Louis Cardinals’ baseball announcer Jack Buck, too, takes on that role of mercy and presence. When he hears of John’s injuries, he visits him in the hospital and announces straight into the boy’s coma: “Hey kid, wake up.” It’s the same voice John is used to hearing call baseball games on the radio, and it seems to call him back to life. Later, we see Buck sending autographed baseballs for John to write thank-you notes—helping him relearn how to write—attending John’s graduation, and even bringing his Hall of Fame trophy to share with him. The parallel is unmistakable: Grace keeps showing up—in voice, in presence, in love that refuses to let us stay asleep to our lives, even when we are tempted to do so.
It’s the same question all believers must face. “Why me?” is the mystery at the core of faith itself.
At one point, when John is in college, drinking too much and feeling discouraged, his father counsels him, “You can’t choose the path you walk, but you can choose the way you walk it.” That’s the film’s unspoken theology of vocation and suffering: Our freedom as human beings lies not in avoiding pain but in choosing how to respond to it—with courage and faith through the suffering that we all inevitably meet. As St. Peter writes, “After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you” (1 Peter 5:10).
We see that very promise play out in Soul on Fire. The suffering that should have destroyed John O’Leary becomes the very place where grace takes hold. The burns that disfigured his body are transformed into marks of renewal; each scar becomes a reminder that redemption is real. It is not triumphalist; it is tender. Throughout the film, John asks, “Why me?” He first asks it in anguish in the hospital after the fire, but later in awe at the love he is shown. “Why am I worthy of such love?” he wonders. “Why does grace find me?” It’s the same question all believers must face. “Why me?” is the mystery at the core of faith itself.
When the credits rolled, my daughter looked up at me and said, “So, it’s really about the dad and the son, right? The dad has a lot of wisdom.” She’s absolutely right. This movie is about the Father—and all of us children who keep setting fires on this Earth when we shouldn’t—and the amazing grace that keeps putting them out for us through his love. Soul on Fire reveals how grace transforms ruin into revelation. This film is a work of evangelization at its best. It is not preachy. Rather, it is a story that opens the soul to truth, beauty, and the love of a Father who never stops calling his children home.