Freetown

Amid the chaos of the First Liberian Civil War (1989-1996), a group of African Mormon missionaries flees the violence in Monrovia, the capital, for the presumed safety of Freetown in neighboring Sierra Leone, crammed into a rattletrap car with a worried but good-hearted driver. Written by Melissa Leilani Larson and director Garrett Batty, the movie has laudable intentions on its side (not least a determination to counteract the lily-white image of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), but it's limp, leaden, redundant and too-clearly hampered by a limited budget. The inexperienced cast is earnest but wooden, easily upstaged by the stark beauty of the Ghanaian countryside where the movie was filmed. J.L.