To be released tomorrow on DVD: "Godspeed"

Grade: C-plus
In director Robert Saitzyk's ethereally grim slice of low-budget filmmaking Godspeed, healing and retribution meet like participants in a western-style showdown.

Set in an unforgiving, harshly beautiful Alaskan wilderness (and filmed around Anchorage and Wasilla), it lays out the fated convergence of three disturbed souls: Charlie, a compromised faith healer (Joseph McKelheer) for whom an unspeakable tragedy has led him to drink; an alluring stranger named Sarah (Courtney Halverson) who's drawn emotionally and sexually to Charlie's pain; and her apocalyptic-minded brother Luke (Cory Knauf, also the co-screenwriter), who has his own ideas of biblical deliverance.

Cinematographer Michael Hardwick's poetically assured use of the RED One digital camera gives Saitzyk's Terrence Malick-ish ambitions a compelling visual orientation in spiritual uneasiness - and eventually brutally violent resolution - but what keeps Godspeed from lasting power are its melodramatic swerves and less-than-revelatory acting. But despite its fissures in tone and technique, Godspeed occasionally plays like a sturdy indie outpost of revenge cinema.