
Last Ounce of Courage is a 2012 movie about how the struggle of American Christians to celebrate Christmas is very much like -if not exactly- like, fighting in a war. Iâm not trying to be cute. Thatâs exactly what this is, sincerely, and I need you to understand that before we talk about it. It was made by people who think you think Christmas, the popular thing everyone loves, is against the law to celebrate.

This terrible, embarrassing film was endorsed by Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, which helped it lose more money than any movie has ever lost, but weâll get into that later. More importantly, it was the first and only theatrical motion picture to receive the âChuck Norris Seal of Approval,â something previously only awarded to flex-crotched Karate jeans. The point is, if you know anything about filmmaking or philosophy, you already know the âChuck Norris Seal of Approvalâ is the same amount of prestige as a medal saying âSubwayâs Jared Liked My Family Photo.â

Chuck Norrisâ ancestors died for my freedom to experience a light-to-moderate amount of Christmas decorations, and in their honor I will place the âChuck Norris Seal of Approvalâ on every Last Ounce of Courage screenshot I share, maybe on everything I ever make for the rest of my life. In fact, I just checked with the hospital and they donât have a rule against renaming my daughter Chuck Norris Approved Karate Jeans Reiley. Plus, hospital administrators are not like lawyersâ itâs totally free to ask as many questions as you want. It would have cost me $900 to get this much athleteâs foot advice from my lawyâ hold on, it sounds like Chuck Norris Approved Karate Jeans just broke something important.
Iâm back. It was just a DVD player, which I was going to retire anyway after it courageously faced down Last Ounce of Courage. Letâs talk about it!

The movie opens with a Ronald Reagan quote about the necessity and virtue of war, which is the tone this movie uses to handle celebrating Christmas. It is your blood duty to enjoy this sacred holiday, and your life could not be better spent than its defense. Does that sound crazy? That you might need to willingly die to protect Christmas? Then get the fuck out of here. This movie isnât for you. As for the rest of you heroes, take now your Christmas pills and die knowing your sacrifice will be the bullet to finally kill Halloween.
If you followed instructions, youâre dead, but Iâm going to keep going anyway. The first seven minutes of Last Ounce of Courage are a sledgehammer of tragedy. A family sends their son off to a distant war for reasons no one mentions or understands, he gets killed, they have a sad, expensive funeral, and their family is torn apart. Itâs a lot of great examples of why war is actually bad, but this movie is about as self-aware as a⊠oh man, let me think of something ridiculous⊠as a movie about the struggle to experience Christmas.
I should mention that one of the filmâs two directors cast himself as a mysterious cowboy haunting the background of every scene so far.

Despite many closeups of himself and his family crying, the main character, Bob Revere, explains how sad he is in a voiceover. He accidentally spells out the mindset of the target audience when he says all he wants is for everyone to stop what theyâre doing and understand the pain heâs feeling. The filmmakers think âgive me attention and pity me,â is how a hero processes grief. Itâs how Ronald Reagan would watch his horse die. Itâs how Meghan McCain would drink from a paper holiday cup without an image of the Christ child breaching the birth canal.
We cut to 14 years later, and we see Bob Revere working at a pharmacy when a group of bikers storm in. Itâs his old motorcycle club, The Hellfighters, and they need to treat a gunshot wound. Their leader is a little person who they carry around like they just won him at the carnival.

Bob agrees not to report the gunshot wound to the police and they all hug. Both directors seem to have given the note âHug like the manly love you feel for each other hurts. Hug like there is so much emotion inside you it might rupture from your virgin anus, like our Lord baby God on a real Christmas paper cup.â Every actor makes use of this note, and they all embrace with a grim combination of passion and confusion.

These men hug like men. Sometimes small men, but with the insecure masculinity of an emotionally neglected son twice their size.

If this was better art, youâd think these were desperate men in love, tormented by a secret the town of Mount Columbus is too small to understand. All these platonic embraces between powerful men on the edge of tears reminds Bob of what he used to do with his dead boy.

Bob Revereâs grandson, Christian, has moved back to town after many years. He greets his estranged grandpa with a 12-step high five like a teenager in a Christian movie, and Bob mistakes it for an LA gang handshake. With their characters fully developed the plot gets underway.
The family watches home videos taken of Christianâs father as a child, doing normal kid things like reading his favorite Gideon Bible and celebrating Christmas in full shepherd cosplay. Christian asks , âSo why donât people do Christmas like that anymore? With the shepherds and everything.â Itâs not a bad question.
Bob Revere responds, âWell, for a long time, people were trying to pass laws trying to get rid of Christmas altogether.â Christian never gets a chance to follow up on how⊠theatrical nativity performances in private homes were stopped by⊠uncited, unpassed laws? Instead, the tape cuts to his dad leaving for war. So the mom filmed seven seconds of her son reading a Bible, four seconds of him in a wise man costume, and then nothing until he got on a bus to war fifteen years later. You know, like a normal Earth home movie.

Christian goes through his dead fatherâs footlocker and takes his treasured childhood Bible. Then the movie immediately cuts to him in the principalâs office where heâs in trouble for bringing some kind of contraband to school! Is it drugs? No, worse. This is going to shock you, but it was the Bible from earlier. His mother, grandfather, neighbor, and a policeman have all been called in to deal with this extremely serious matter. It would have been less subtle if each actor crawled out of the television to spit the black liquid form of these words into your open mouth: âTHEY ARE COMING FOR YOUR BIBLE NEXT!â
Christian is let off with a warniâ oh, âChristian.â I just got that. Heâs let off with a warning, and he lingers outside the principalâs office to complain about his religious liberties, like a hero. âItâs a stupid rule,â he tells his family, and suddenly he is interrupted by every movie trope at the same time.

A magically wise black school janitor, Leonard, appears to tell them this ban on Bibles? Itâs barely a policy, much less a rule. He adds, âThey can have their Bibles here if they want to. Theyâre just a bunch of cowards.â This movie is amazing. This is the fourth time theyâve complained about their rights being taken away from them by people who didnât and couldnât take their rights away from them.
Bob Revere goes back into the principalâs office and whines, âRusty, is there an actual rule that you canât bring a Bible into school?â
Principal Rusty shrugs, âWell, no! But I donât want any trouble. You canât take any chances these days, Bob. Everybodyâs looking for a reason to sue us!â Heâs done thinking and talking about it. The scene just sort of ends with him taking a phone call while Bob gives him his toughest little frown, holding his dead baby boyâs Bible.

We cut to the family at home with the teenage neighbor girl, and theyâre all enjoying FOX News together. They are glued to the screen while Bill OâReilly reports on some coastal elite town cutting Christmas cheer by 4%. So this film is not set in a fictional world where Christmas is under attack. This is set in our world where âChristmas is under attack.â And so youâre clear on how I feel, this is insanity beneath anyoneâs contempt. If you think the billion dollar industry with its own season, music genre, movie genre, TV genre, drug store aisle, and cuisine is âunder attackâ youâre as wrong as a person can be. Youâre stupid as shit, on purpose, and anyone indulging your opinion on anything should be getting paid as a mental health care worker or beating you back through a portal to the backwards universe you came from. Fuck you.

Bill OâReilly tells viewers, âWeâre living in a time when some retail outlets will not say Merry Christmas. Insaaane?â A normal person would see that and say, âHa ha ha what? Did heâ ha ha I canât believe my grandma had a stroke in front of that guy. Letâs definitely not put that crazy clip in our feature film.â The makers of Last Ounce of Courage went a different way. They used it as the cue for one of the main characters to switch off the TV and ask his grandpa, âWHAT DID MY DAD DIE FOR, BOB?â
Bob isnât even offended. He tells his grandson, âHe gave his life for his country.â
Christian doesnât give a shit. He says, âSo what are we doing. What are YOU doing!?â Iâm not leaving out anything. This is what this family said to each other after a very questionable FOX News report riled them up. And the filmmakers, along with Chuck Norris, think this perfect example of why alarmist media is dangerous is actually wisdom. They think these are the good guys.
Christianâs grandmother tries to calm him down. âYour grandpa was in a very special unit. He rescued prisoners of war,â which is not really how the military is structured. What sheâs describing is more exactly Rambo. Which I have no problem with! Rambo rules. Iâm only pointing out how strange it is for a movie about the glory and virtue of the American armed services to be written by three civilians who know nothing about the military.
Knowing his grandfather was, again, precisely like Rambo has no effect on him. He screams, âWhat are you doing NOW!?â Like why isnât he still rescuing Vietnam War POWs as an elderly man in Colorado? Why isnât his KA-BAR dripping with the blood of Christmasâ enemies?

âItâs not that easy, kid. What are YOU doing?â counters Bob. Please believe me this is word-for-word what these characters say to each other.
âIâm just one kid.â Itâs checkmate.
âWell, Iâm just one grandpa.â Itâs double fucking triple checkmate.
The neighbor girl breaks the tie by saying, âI think⊠Chris is right. We should all be doing something.â
And there it is. Nothing has happened to them, no one is after them, and they have to do something about it. Something very much like war. These people are irrationally angry and humiliating themselves in order to protect their happiness and pride, and there will never be a more perfect encapsulation of right wing politics. Itâs stunning. Itâs clearer than any art could hope to communicate. They set out to save Christmas and they accidentally explained white grievance.

Bob is listening to the radio at work and hears some town renamed their âChristmas Paradeâ to the âSanta Parade.â He reacts to the news with disbelief and sadness, like a chimpanzee watching an escape artist drown. The children are back home, digging through the attic for something, anything to use to express their heroic interest in Christmas. They find a few random, moldy reindeer toys, but nothiâ wait, whatâs this? A four foot sign that says âMERRY CHRISTMAS?â This might work.


They hang the sign in full defiance of the unspoken anti-Christmas agenda of their rural Colorado neighbors. In your goddamn faces, friends and neighbors! We went to the Christmas aisle in our local store, bought a product called âChristmas lights,â said âMerry CHRISTMASâ to a nice lady who said it back, and then used those CHRISTMAS lights for their ordinary, intended purpose! We say CHRISTMAS in our home weâd like to see you TRY TO STOP US!
Honestly, Iâm just having fun at this point. The last two images perfectly sum up Last Ounce of Courage, and thereâs no need for any of this. The movie is off the rails anyway. The next scene is Bob shooting out of bed shouting, âChristianâs right! What am I doing!?â Then he goes on the Internet to do hours of Christmas research, and heads to city hall on a full Christmas rampage. By the way, heâs also the townâs mayor. Iâm not sure the movie mentioned that until now.
A military march plays. He takes the American flag off his motorcycle. He growls another voiceover. âI had been a coward. Passive. And even selfish.â It is as dramatic as these filmmakers could make it. This one mother fucking man is going to sacrifice everything to make a difference which ends up being going to the city hall storage closet to unpack the Christmas decorations they already had.
With madness in his eyes, he tells his subordinates everything he learned on the Internet last night. He smugly informs them Christmas is a national holiday, which they didnât know. He tells them, âA public teacher is allowed to objectively teach about the origins of Christmas⊠in the classroom! They can. They donât. But they can.â They canât believe it each of the several times he explains to them how Christmas is, in fact, legal. You can have Christmas! What are we doing here!? As established by your lived experience, the society we all share, and this movie itself, all of this is for nothing. Every moment of this film and culture war is absolutely and pointlessly insane.

This scene goes on for a very long time.

It wonât fucking stop. He retells his entire seven hours of autoplayed YouTube, and itâs as just baaaaaarely not Nazi as it sounds.

By the end of the scene you will learn 400 ways Christmas isnât against the law along with how unhealthy it is for a 70-year-old to stay up all night reading right wing conspiracy websites, another thing you already knew.
The scene finally ends, and Bob gets hold of a construction crane to hang the cityâs tinsel. He asks his assistant how it looks who replies, âIt looks illegal! Are you sure itâs not unconstitutional!?â
Oh Jesus. He said the wrong thing. Bob, as if he was waiting his whole life for this question, RECREATES THE PREVIOUS SCENE ALMOST VERBATIM.

The local media shows up to get a shot of the tinsel and guess what Bob tells the reporter? Thatâs right! âChristmas is not illegal!â The Vietnam veteran losing his mind from untreated PTSD and insomnia tells the reporter he loves Christmas and wants the town to be known as âThe Christmas City!â She hears this and tells her viewers, âYou heard right. The mayorâs bringing religion back to this little town.â This news is a bombshell. When it goes out over the air, the band at the local biker bar stops mid-set to hear the TV.

Bobâs not the only one in the family saving Christmas, though. The grandson and the neighbor girl are hatching a scheme to sabotage the junior high school âWinter Space Odyssey,â which is the story of the nativity adapted to be about space aliens. Hilarious, right? Itâs exactly what those liberal schools would do! But this frantic stab at satire destroys the stakes of the film. Itâs too silly even for a universe where you can be arrested for off-the-books Christmas crimes. And the last thing the messaging of this ridiculous movie needed was for the audience to think, âWait, maybe theyâre kidding?â
So, like teenagers do, the kids try out, learn, and rehearse a middle school play in order to sabotage it with a second play they write and choreograph themselves about Christâs birth.

Every cast and crew member is in on the plan, and they get together in the attic to Christmas-up the script. For instance, the alien Zandorâs line of, âNot to worry Zindor, itâs been fâ becomesâŠ

⊠âHello I am an angel.â Those parents hoping to watch a Christmas play wonât know what motherfucking goddamn hit them.
Meanwhile, news of the city-approved tinsel has reached the desk of âThe Hammerâ played by Fred âThe Hammerâ Williamson. Heâs the leader of an ACLUish group dedicated to defeating Christmas. Iâm guessing he was cast because the filmmakers wanted the most intimidating actor they could think of to make their hero look tough. Unfortunately, Bob Revereâs defiant Christmas hero face is the same one he makes when he hugs his son and cries.

You approved this, Chuck Norris? This little crybaby looks like he swallowed his dentures and isnât going anywhere until he passes them. For what seems like three hours the movie is a series of city council meetings and town halls where Fred Williamson tells them they canât have Christmas and Bob says âYeah, huh we can!â I am legitimately astonished I am only 40 minutes into the movie when The Hammer tells Bob, âYou are breaking the law,â and Bob says, âShow me the law,â and Fred says, âWell, then you are violating the Constitution,â and Bob says, âMr. Hammerschmidt, that is a lie and you know it.â This life I have chosen for myself has me looking at the stupidest things Man has ever made all day, every day and Iâve never seen anything like this.
Fred and Bob are both making irrefutable arguments, so letâs check back in with the kids. They are having another secret meeting to go over their plan to adapt the sci-fi parody of Jesusâ birth back into a non-parody of Jesusâ birth for an audience of their parents and no one. One girl, this late in the plan, is just now learning Jesus was not really found by aliens. She adds, âWell, I didnât know! Iâve never read the Bible!â Parents, educators, children⊠this is what is at stake. This is why school plays need to be about the gentile, virgin birth of the Christian God.

Bob is in another city council meeting where he rants about all the freedoms being taken away, and gives one example. He tells them how a couple of years ago his son mentioned the word âGodâ in his valedictorian speech and complains, âWell, today we would be sued by some lone humanist.â Thatâs his whole speech, which means for the 39th time, the thing that has him aggravated is a time nothing happened to him, but he would find outrageous if it had.

Bob leaves in a big rig to get a Christmas tree, ranting at the radio for playing âGrandma Got Runover by a Reindeerâ which is not real Christmas music. If thereâs a reindeer in your song and it isnât in the barn trying to eat his newborn Lordâs afterbirth, Bob doesnât count it as Christmas music.
Fred Williamson gets an emergency phone call to inform him about Bobâs plan to get a Christmas tree. A Christmas tree!? Not on his watch, turkey. He organizes a rally of hardcore separation of church and state fans who chant, âSEPARATE! CHURCH AND STATE!â And this is what I was talking about earlier when I said the movie shouldnât have added the element of satire, because thereâs no way these dumbshits are serious.

Hammerschmidt and Bob Revere confront each other at another town hall meeting in a scene where a white actor lectures Fred âThe Hammerâ Williamson on how a Christmas parade getting renamed is taking his freedoms as a Christian American away. So if you ever need to hurt Fred Williamsonâs feelings any time during the rest of his life, remind him he let this happen, for probably about $9000 minus his agentâs fee.
Bob tells the town, again, that Christmas is a national holiday which you canât change, and he gets a laugh by saying, âThatâd be like calling Columbus Day⊠Great Explorerâs Day!â Then Bob uses the ultimate freedom card. He tells Fred, âAs much as I hate what youâre doinâ⊠youâre free to do it. Just like Iâm free to celebrate Christmas.â Itâs⊠I donât know⊠ironic that the writers created this antagonistic monster and then point out there are similarities between what heâs doing and how we should celebrate Christmas.
Fred has an ultimate card of his own. Itâs an envelope containing âa directiveâ which, if Iâm understanding it correctly, takes away the townâs Christmas. Bob leaps to his feet and has to be gently held back from kicking Fred âThe Hammerâ Williamsonâs ass. Itâs another perfect digest of the filmâs messageâ losing a make-believe fight and getting really cranky when no one takes your suffering seriously. The Hammer smirks and leaves completely unkicked. Hey, Chuck Norris, maybe you need to explain the process you go through when giving your endorsement. Because this sucks.

Fred Williamson is drunk on imaginary right-wing boogeyman power. He tears down the Christmas tree and crushes its angel topper under his foot. He convinces the âHealth Departmentâ to shut down the Mission at the Cross for violating religious iconography statutâ oh, I should have mentioned Bob is a Rambo, pharmacist, biker, Facebook uncle, mayor, and also the owner of a religious charity mission, but the kind that isnât allowed to display religious icons. Itâs dumb, sure, but in a way itâs impressive for three writers, two directors, and 12 executive producers to know literally nothing about any of the subjects theyâre so passionate about.
The children are busy rehearsing the official version of their play, which involves a sci-fi version of âSilent Nightâ with painfully secularized lyrics like âround yon SNOWMANâ because everyone involved in this stupid bullshit is just the fucking worst.
No one would have any reason to suspect them of wanting to sabotage this âWinter Space Odyssey.â They are giving it their all and their choreography is flawless. Which means they fully dedicated themselves to learning this play while they wrote and produced a second one to save Christmas*.
* Remind their own parents about the most famous story in American folklore.
They go back to their attic and work more on their theatrical ambush plans. The neighbor girl snarls, âHopefully the audience will understand that Christmas is about peace! And joy and love!â The fuck it is, though. These are the most belligerent, unhappy people using misplaced hate to safeguard the power of their uncontested cultural supremacy, and with an entire universe designed to make them the heroes, they are still unlikeable pieces of trash.
Theyâre starting to realize this plan might get them in trouble, and one of them goes, âYou know, guys, this could really jeopardize my station as stage tech!â He thinks he might keep his job as the middle school stage tech after he sabotages the middle school play and goes on to high school! Itâs just good writing! Still, he reminds the others of how serious this is and they make a pledge, only wait, they need some kind of talisman to swear on! No one balks at this very real tradition, so they rummage through boxes hoping to find an object sacred enough to pledge a Christian theater prank upon.
Iâm not sure the editor meant to leave in, but the kids are immediately distracted by a crate of Mardis Gras props.

While everyone else is draping themselves in feathers and beads, Christian finds his grandfatherâs Medal of Honor. Oh my God, no. Oh my God, holy shit, these kids are going to swear to perform the wrong play on the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Last Ounce of Courage is non-stop incredible. If this movie was a person, he would be a racecar-driving cocaine addict named Larry âFirst Date Anal Fistingâ Cocaine.

Things are going badly for Bob. Despite his super sane declarations of the legality of Christmas, heâs lost his veteranâs shelter, his Christmas tree, and now his job as mayor. Plus, nobody came to his familyâs Christmas party. W-wait? Whoâs this at the door?

Why itâs the local unhoused and mentally ill! Along with the substance abusers who lost their support system when Bobâs Mission at the Cross was closed! Yay, theyâre here to party! In his home! This âhappy holidayâ is turning out to be a âMerry Christmasâ after all. Now, letâs jam on the KORG!

Wait, hold on. Everyone reset Act 2. Things are bad again. Thereâs a front page story about how Bob, recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor for his special rescue work, isnât really a war hero.

Finding out his grandpa is a fraud is a pretty big blow to Christian. At least for a few seconds before the magical janitor appears to tell him itâs a lie. You see, he was on the secret Vietnam War rescue operation described by the front page of the 2012 local newspaper. Bob Revere was his sergeant. He says, in perfect military vernacular, âEvery mission he performed was perfect. All but one.â
Itâs a long, clumsy story, told by someone who did not know any military experts to run it by, but I can sum it up in one sentence: Bob stepped on a booby trap and everyone except him and the janitor exploded. Bob is with his wife telling her the same story. âI was pushing them too hard,â he cries, not quite understanding how words or explosives work.

If you told me 30 years ago, Iâd be watching the bad guy from Road House weep for an entire film about failing to save Christmas, Iâd have said, âW-what happens to movies in the future?â
The writing here is such a mess thereâs no way to know for sure, but I think the reason the newspaper called Bob Revere âNot a War Heroâ was because he stepped on a Viet Cong tripwire? I keep complaining about this, but it is fascinating how someone writing a military movie can know so little about the military that they think all of a soldierâs honor is stripped of them if the enemy lands a shot. He led the POW Rescue Squad! You canât call him a fraud because heâs not immune to landmine. Itâd be like Michael Jordan calling the wrong number and hearing, âWho? No, thereâs no Scottie Pippen here. Iâm sorry, you fraud, but Iâm going to need you to throw away two MVP awards and all your championship rings.â
Things look bleak, but for the fifth time in the movie, everyone has had enough and they are going to save fucking Christmas. To the rousing drums of a military march, Bob pulls a âJESUS SAVESâ cross into his truck! The theater kids get ready to surprise their parents with the story of baby Jesus! And the bikers pick up their little leader! Itâs time to, as they say in the military marines: Army force ahead! For Christmas!

Bob is going to remount the cross on the Mission at the Cross, a Christian organization he owns. This is a big story, so a newscaster is there reminding viewers it was originally taken down âbecause a single citizen said the cross was offensive to him.â Wait, thatâs how the town lost Christmas? Some fucking guy? Christianity, your one weakness was an email from Travis? Jesus Christ, you guys.
Bob is on the roof and the town cheers for him as he struggles to pull the cross up! Unfortunately, it looks like getting it in and out of his truck burned his arms out and heâs mostly just forming new hernias. His grandson hurries up the fire escape to help and Bob screams, âCHRISTIAN! YOU GOTTA GO BACK!! ITâS TOO DANGEROUS!â like heâs disarming a bomb, not lifting a decoration up one story with a rope.
Thereâs no nice way to put it. From mission objective to execution, this is the pussiest shit in the history of pussy shit. If Bob was up here trying to cry into a teddy bear to save Saturdays and accidentally peed his pants, it would be an identical amount of courage. I think Christmas will be okay, but it will have nothing to do with the wasted efforts of this toddler-dicked clown.

The crowd watches them lose a game of tug-of-war to gravityâs pull on 180 pounds for a while. Mercifully, the bikers steal a fire truck and send up the guy who got his gunshot wound treated at the Target pharmacy counter yesterday. With his help, they get it done! Their Christian charity organization called âMission at the Crossâ has a cross again! Congratulations, Christmas.

Bob starts a speech about he may no longer be the mayor, but heâll always be a âfreedom fighter.â Okay, Poop Crywalker. You didnât exactly blow up the Death Star. You put a cross back on a building against the wishes of one Travis. This was more like bringing your own Pepsi into a restauranâ wait, oh no, heâs still going.

He tells the crowd, âItâs time you stood up for what our brothers in arms, and my own son, died for.â He tells them this again and again using slightly different words. Maybe they shot 70 versions of this and accidentally left them all in? Oh, man. This speech is never going to stop.

The news is running this? Ranting Madman Recites Manifesto From Roof? They are broadcasting this mental breakdown live on the air!? I mean this guy is losing his fuâ here, Iâll just transcribe some. This is maybe 5% of it:
âOur rights are being destroyed, perhaps forever. But donât you see? Weâre letting it happen. Weâre asleep. We sleep and they come in like a thief in the night and they take whatâs left! WAKE UP! We canât sleep anymore! Wake up and look around you! Look whatâs coming over the horizon! We canât let the enemy take one more inch! NOT one more inch! We canât be silent anymore! The silence has to stop! And it has to stop today!â

Ten minutes in and itâs not over. Like someone whoâs never been allowed to talk this long before, Bob Revere is still going. I want to remind you again heâs talking about enjoying the most popular holiday from the most common religion, and he screams, âYOU CAN HEAR THE VOICES FROM THE GRAVES OF THOSE WHO DIED FOR THEIR FREEDOMS! Theyâre wondering if they died in vain! We fight for freedom! We fight for freedom! We fight for freedom!!!â
People are crying. Theyâre clapping. They seem to think this lunatic doing unlicensed construction without a permit in the middle of the night and squealing about the disappointed ghosts of our dead children finally saved Christmas. The film cuts to at least 70 different extras, bursting with tears. Still, the scene needs something else, right? Something to really drive home the magnitude of what this man has done, and inspired all of us to do. Can you guess what it is?
What if I told you that while Bob was getting arrested for his beliefs, his grandson told the cop to step back so he could present him with The Congressional Medal of Honor?

Christian tells him, âIf you werenât a hero before, you are now.â The cheering, weeping crowd has never seen anything like it. But fuck you, itâs still not enough.
The teenage boy chases down the cop car and pounds on it to get it to stop. He crouches down and gives his grandfather a salute, which Bob Revere, recipient of one Medal of Honor twice, returns with honor. The Rocky Mountains explode with ejaculate. The inspired crowd was long ago transformed into pure light and exploded against the evening sky. Tonight, all of Christian America is cumming⊠cumming all over Christmasâ tits.

And with that, the newscaster signs off with a reminder that the big middle school play is tonight. Fuck! That means all thirty minutes of that went out over the air? And it also means we still have the school play thing to do. FUCK. Poor Bob Revere is going to miss it since heâs in jail, but as luck would have it, the mysterious old cowboy from earlier is in the cell next to him and has a radio tuned to the⊠live broadcast of the junior high school play?

Bob doesnât find this weird at all. Itâs only a shadowy stranger listening to children put on a play from jail. And letâs talk about the âWinter Space Odyssey.â You already know it sucks. Itâs supposed to. But the opening song has six kids dressed as aliens chanting a single lyric: âAHH!â These lazy fucks. The script needed a song, any song, here and the one they came up with has half a lyric and one note. Itâs like a world record speedrun of the least amount of effort put into a song. And did this play start at 11pm? We were on that goddamn roof for hours when Christmas was already saved! A guy got the Medal of Honor for it! Why are you still doing this, kids?

The alien performers run backstage and do a quick change into their shepherd and angel costumes. They start in on their Jesus play and no one in the audience cares. Why would they even know? There are 12 people in the crowd and they are Christian parents at a holiday recital. Anyone paying attention is going to think, âSure, right. Nativity stuff.â The principal and the director are pretty upset about it, though.

If youâre wondering how they handled these two, the magical janitor locks the director in a closet and physically threatens the principal.

I think both Christians and Others can agree kidnapping and coercion arenât crimes if itâs for a good cause. And there is no cause more good than defiantly, some would say courageously, singing âSilent Nightâ but without space alien lyrics. Which these wild pranksters do, at least until Christian storms onto the stage and screws up their plans.

Christian commandeers their hijacking to announce they are no longer doing the Christ birth play, but instead theyâre going to watch a video his dead dad sent his mom from war. Those are the stakes in this movie. A highly produced pro-Christian prank on a junior high school production of an alien-themed nativity spoof gets sabotaged by a second pro-Christian prank, only the second Christian is a narcissist, not a religion. Itâs complicated, but very much not important.
A screen comes down and they show the video Christianâs dad recorded for his wife. It is very personal, and very horny.

He gives a speech about how he would gladly die for Christmas freedoms, almost like heâs daring the universe to kill him. We donât know where he is, but he says âPeople here would be killed if they celebrated Christmas. But freedomâs worth it.â And then he dies! Along with every soldier sitting behind him! A bomb hits them and they die on camera!

This is the second interruption of the play and itâs a snuff film!

And none of this is implied by an abrupt cut! The still-working camera falls on his dead face!

Itâs the worst thing I can imagâ wait, the the crowd is clapping? Everyone starts singing âSilent Night!?â A seventy-year-old wounded soldier, in full camouflage, stands up and salutes!? I guess this guy came straight from Saigon to this middle school play. This is so fucked up.

They ruined a play two times to trick a group of Christians to learn about Jesus to trick that group again into watching a soldier die with extremely full balls. And the man sleeping with that dead soldierâs widow, who has never served in the military, also stands to give a salute.

Back in jail, Bob Revere is crying again, listening to the sweet sounds of people clapping for the video of his boy dying on the radio. The old cowboy teleports through the bars and into Bobâs cell. âWell done, Bob. Well done,â he says. Ha ha ha these assholes canât be serious.

Bob knows something odd is happening, but still doesnât quite get it.

When his wife arrives, Bob starts crying again. He heard everything over the radio, and heâs so proud of their grandson. She tells him, like no one should have to, âBob? It wasnât on the radio.â He still doesnât quite get it.

Bob stammers about the gray haired guy who can pass through metal bars and listen to any school play on his radio, but a 90-year-old police officer tells him there was no one else in there with him. Bob is still kind of confused.

They leave jail and the whole town is there to cheer for Bob. They sing âSilent Nightâ again, the forbidden song those kids sacrificed everything to teach them. Fred Williamson walks up to the cop and insists he arrest everyone, and itâs a testament to my sanity that after 100 minutes of Last Ounce of Courage, I still find it ridiculous for this movieâs drama to hinge on Christmas being illegal while also reminding us many times how Christmas is not illegal.
Bob insolently tells the crowd, âMerry Christmas. Merry Christmas to EVERYONE,â like heâs refusing an Obama executive command to have sex with a sheep dog. He says it like heâs on Joe Roganâs podcast deadnaming a trans man who now goes by Mike Holidays. And at the back of the crowd, watching this hero become a legend, is the mysterious cowboy. With a tip of his hat, he magically vanishes.

Bob acknowledges the man only he can see with an open-palmed salute in another majestic and inadvertent encapsulation of the filmâs core messageâaccidentally giving off fascist signals while losing a culture war against your imagination in order to stick it to an enemy which never existed.

The movie ends with another pro-war Ronald Reagan quote and Bobâs voiceover. âI love being free. But I now know freedom only comes at great sacrifice. From each and every one of us.â Itâs breathtaking. Itâs half a debate nerdâs talking point about why Christmas should start in September, adapted into a movie by the softest white supremacists. Itâs worse than anything, but hereâs what makes it even more specialâ it somehow lost more money than it cost.
I donât mean it didnât make its money back. It did, at least before advertising costs. You may not like it, but Christians will buy anything, and right-wing nutbags will watch a sheep dog fuck their wife if you tell them itâll hurt the feelings of the educated. What happened was, Last Ounce of Courage broke so many laws during its marketing campaign, it lost $32.4 million in a settlement.
To spread the word about this monument to bitch fragility, they robocalled millions of homes with this recorded message from Governor Mike Huckabee:

Youâre not allowed to do this for so many good reasons and the $32.4 million they were fined was the nice number. It would have been over a billion dollars in damages if the courts werenât so afraid of losing Chuck Norrisâ approval. Other movies have definitely lost more money than Last Ounce of Courage, but thereâs a difference between failed art and this. This wasnât even trying to be art. This was a shameless pandering to soft-brained idiots who told their grifters exactly what they wanted to buy, and it still lost twenty times more than it cost to produce, not counting the immeasurable damage done to the Chuck Norris Seal of Approvalâs integrity.

19 replies on âUpsetting Day: Last Ounce of Courage đâ
Chuck Norris approved, and not one spinning roundhouse kick to the face? Hannukah is ruined.
Spinning? Sounds like DREIDEL TALK, comrade!
This movie is real! Holy shit!
Holy shit. There was like four occasions where I was disappointed that the film (and therefore the article) was clearly about to end, but⊠but then it just continued the same beats in a slightly different location!
You dared doubt the mighty 1-900-Hot-Sean?
Umm⊠this was supposed to be a response to a different postâŠ
I met Fred âThe Hammerâ once⊠I tried to get an autograph and he removed my ass cheeks from my body with one glorious hand. Ruined my fancy boy jeans and my pride⊠all because I had the audacity to walk up to him wearing a t-shirt that said âChristmas is for pussy ass football losers!â
go figure.
This. Was. Epic.
I canât tell if itâs an understandable oversight or a subtle gag, but I appreciate the only things Chuck Norris approved of in the third act of the movie were the janitor giving a thumbs up, and the soldiers having ordinance dropped on their head in the middle of Horny Christmas.
Great article, Mr. Baby. But the comment sections here are worth the price of admission.
Keep degenerating, you magnificent bastards. Im enjoying watching yall lose your minds.
Aw, snap! Mike Huckabees boy did kill a dog! I mean, Im ten beers in today and I remembered that. Maybe WEâRE the cursed artifacts from the wrong dimensionâŠ
Oh my god, âBob Revereâ looks like he stars in tons of these right-wing disaster flicks. Heâs in another one called âAmeriGeddonâ where he acts alongside ALEX JONES.
Seanbaby mentions it obliquely, in passing, but I really think it should be emphasised that this movie stars a guy who is best (only!) known for saying, âI used to fuck guys like you in prison!â and then getting his throat ripped out by Patrick Swayze.
The catchphrase for this movie should be âI used to fuck guys like you in prison, but now I fuck guys for Christmas (in jail)!â
Film writeups can be deceiving when thereâs so much insanity to discuss. It feels like I just read a breakdown of a three-hour epic, but IMDb tells me this piece of shit is barely over 90 minutes long.
With that knowledge, would you say itâs worth a drunken hate-watch this holiday season?
Yes.
I have a new pet theory: the mysterious cowboy in Last Ounce of Courage is the same entity as the mysterious cowboy in Mulholland Driveâanother movie with a protagonist whoâs lost their grip on reality.
âHowever, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.â
Goddamn if the shoe doesnât fit here
Iâm so happy I stumbled upon this column.
Happy Holidays!
Remember the very first South Park Christmas episode? Where the town was going to hilarious, absurd, comical lengths to extract anything remotely Christmassy from the childrenâs Christmas pageant?
I think the makers of this film saw it, mistook it for a documentary, and thought: âThis would make the BEST movie ever!â
(Featuring the magic cowboy angel as Mr. Hankey)