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Grade: C+

Verdict: No miracles here, but some matters worth thinking about.

Details: Starring Ed Harris and Anne Heche. Directed by Agnieszka Holland. Rated R for profanity, sex-related and violent images and brief drug use. 2 hours.

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Review: These days, it takes an awful lot of faith to make a movie about faith. Especially if you're going to forgo spinning heads and demon children.

"The Third Miracle," from respected director Agnieszka Holland ("Europa, Europa"), has the faith but doesn't always have the follow-through. The result is a decent, often thought-provoking film with some disappointingly weak moments.

A plot summary makes Holland's movie sound distressingly like last year's abysmal "Stigmata." Yet again, a Catholic priest struggling with his own beliefs is sent to investigate a miracle that the church hierarchy clearly wants disproved. Yet again, said hierarchy flirts with dirty pool to get its way. And yet again, the priest is tempted by the pleasurable flesh of a young woman. But while "Miracle" may have its problems, it manages to hold together, delivering a surprise punch near the end that redeems a lot of the slowness and predictability that has gone before. (The title, incidentally, refers to the church's decree that sainthood must be certified by three miracles.)

In the movie's dreamlike World War II prologue, the Allies are bombing the heck out of a small Slovakian village. In the midst of the explosions, terror and destruction, a little girl drops to her knees before a statue of the Virgin Mary. And something extraordinary happens.

Jump forward to a blue-collar corner of Chicago, circa 1979, and another statue of the Virgin. This one is said to weep blood on the anniversary of the death of a saintly laywoman who devoted her life to the church. What's more, the bloody tears are said to work miracles.

Now the community is campaigning for sainthood for its local heroine. The church designates Father Frank Shore (Ed Harris), a.k.a. "the Miracle Killer," to "handle" the situation. With his own faith shaky, Father Frank finds his task made more difficult by the dead woman's attractive daughter (Anne Heche), an adamant nonbeliever. Finally, there's the miracle case herself, i.e., the beneficiary, as a youngster, of the bleeding Madonna. She's now a tarty, drugged-up teenager. Sneers her dowdy, unloving mother: "If you ask me, God wasted a miracle."

The movie's point, brought home by a stretching-it coincidence involving an elegantly nasty bishop (Armin Mueller-Stahl) dead set against canonizing this "holy housewife," is simple and fulfilling: God, it turns out, doesn't waste miracles.

One of the film's central themes is that faith is inevitably tied up in mystery. Alas, the mystery here is too neatly tied up. Also rather obvious are the contrasts between the fat-cat priests and their suffering flock--excellent wine versus rat-infested alleys.

Still, anyone concerned with matters of faith will find something here to contemplate. As Father Frank says, "How does faith get away from you? How do you get it back?"

Holland doesn't have the answers, but at least she asks the questions.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Cox News Service

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