A LITTLE PRAYER - Mark Reviews Movies

A Little Prayer, Music Box Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 28, 2025

Bill (David Strathairn) still works at the company his father founded and that he now owns, but all of the pressures and responsibilities of his career have subsided quite a bit. He doesn't go into work early or stay at the office into the night, because he doesn't need to anymore. The man has a bit more time for life outside of his career, and writer/director Angus MacLachlan's quietly heartbreaking A Little Prayer watches as all of the life Bill missed out on over the decades catches up with him in quick succession.

At the very start, everything seems just fine, even about as ideal as things can be, for Bill and his family. He's still married to Venida (Celia Weston), and the two clearly love each other. After all, she stayed with and stood by him during those years of early mornings and late nights on the job, doing some work herself at the company while raising the couple's two children. Bill and Venida have their own lives, with him still showing up at the office every day and her serving as a docent at a nearby colonial town, but when they're together, the two are comfortable and give a sense they wouldn't want to be anywhere or with anyone else.

They're never lonely, either, because Bill and Venida's adult son David (Will Pullen), who now runs the day-to-day operations of the family business, lives in the guesthouse on the couple's property with his wife Tammy (Jane Levy). That couple seems just fine, too, as she awakens in bed on this particular morning with her husband holding her. They kiss, and leaving David to sleep a bit longer, Tammy heads to the main house, where she oversees the family's morning routine.

It's not a chore for her, because Bill is there, and those two talk and laugh and admire a neighboring woman who sings gospel hymns every morning—except Sundays, of course, when she's presumably singing them at church. Tammy helps her father-in-law organize his daily medication regimen, and Bill speaks to and looks at his daughter-in-law as if she doesn't have those two hyphenated words attached to the relationship.

MacLachlan's film is all about little moments and details such as these, even as things become more difficult for Bill and the rest of his family as the days go on and revelations that would have previously been unimaginable to the good-hearted, optimistic patriarch come to light. The man just wants to make up for lost time and get to know his family. The tragedy of this story is that he does just that.

Initially, MacLachlan lulls us into a feeling of comfort and a sense of complacency with this family and their situation. It's all morning sunshine and smiles and good-natured jokes around the kitchen table, with Bill and David in the car on the way to the factory, and as the two women go about their own daily business. The only sign of potential conflict within the family comes from outside the house and those regular routines. Bill and Venida's daughter Patti (Anna Camp) arrives with her own daughter, the young and silent Hadley (Billie Roy), like a whirlwind of stressful energy and drama.

The rest of the family is used to this, because Patti is in a troubled and, to her parents, troubling marriage. They can handle what Patti brings, but Bill, who is now more attentive of and reflective about his family and the role he did or didn't play in it all those years, starts to worry that his regular absence might have been some part of the cause of his daughter's issues. Even worse, perhaps, all of those problems seem to be passing on to his granddaughter, who doesn't speak and runs away from people but also keeps bumping into things. She never hurts herself, which leaves us wondering if it's all a literal cry for attention and affection.

At this point, it's important to note that Bill and Strathairn's performance are front and center for almost the entire film. The character is utterly compelling, because he's only extraordinary in how perfectly plain, unassuming, and, well, ordinary he is. He is a decent man, caring and compassionate in mostly small ways, such as how he always buys rounds for his fellow veterans at the local VFW hall on the rare occasion he goes out after work.

Strathairn, a longtime character actor whose occasional sizeable roles are always a pleasant surprise, embodies that kindness but imbues it with an introspective melancholy. Bill may be polite to and always try to be understanding of everyone around him, but looking at himself, the man struggles to understand if he has failed in allowing a lifetime of working to affect those he loves.

The most significant conflict here comes from Bill's rising suspicion that David, also a military veteran, may be having an affair with his assistant Narcedalia (Dascha Polanco). The signs are there, as the son seems to give extra attention to and flirts with her, and David becomes defensive whenever his father even hints at the possibility, because the man is, after all, too well-mannered to just come right out and ask the obvious question on his mind. Maybe, his hesitation in asking is that he's too afraid to receive an honest answer.

The truth does come out, however. When it does, it does so in more ways than Bill could have anticipated, as Tammy has to make a choice about what she wants right now under these circumstances, Patti shows that—despite her protests—she is stuck in or wants to continue that problematic marriage, and Bill discovers he might be the last person to know what kind of person his son has become.

Watching Bill wrestle with and confront all of these possibilities and realizations throughout A Little Prayer is devastating. MacLachlan defines and examines these characters and relationships with depth and feeling, but it's elevated, too, by the filmmaker's clear understanding that this story is, in its small way, a tragedy, because the distinction between wanting to know and actually knowing so often is.

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