Movie Nation

“Brave the Dark” is a earnest do-good/feel-good story of the “One Great Teacher Makes a Difference” genre. Released by Angel Studios, which brought us “Bonhoeffer,” “Sound of Freedom” and “Homestead,” where “earnest” is their brand, it’s a low-stakes, dramatically flat affair, a picture that never plucks the heartstrings it’s meant to.

“Dark” still makes a decent showcase for British actor Jared Harris (“Chernobyl,” “Mad Men,” and his acting brother Jamie Harris, if not for another brother — Damian Harris — who directed, had a hand in the script and never quite brings it to life.

They’re all sons of the late, great Hollywood hellion Richard Harris, if you didn’t know.

Nicholas Hamilton of “Captain Fantastic” and “It” is Nathan Williams, a high school hunk and track star at Pennsylvania’s Garden Spot High. He’s got a cute girlfriend (Sasha Bhasin), a ready running mate (Will Price), a leather jacket and a ’76 Camaro.

What more could a lad want in 1986 rural Pennsylvania?

It turns out that Nate’s keeping up appearances as the cleanest, best-laundered, best-groomed homeless kid in Lancaster County. He’s living in that Camaro. He runs track — in a fury — “just to use the showers.” He’s got no parents and no visible means of support. That’s a recipe for trouble, burglaries, just to get by.

The other teachers at Garden Spot might dismiss Nate as rude, impulsive, an indifferent student with a bad temper. But Mr. D, aka Stan Deen (Jared Harris), the English teacher, director of school plays and an adored figure on and off campus, notices Nate’s disappointment at not scoring anything from the vending machine. A Hershey bar is offered, and a slow-building mentorship and friendship begins.

In a school full of peers who shrug and say “Let the system take care of him,” after Nate is arrested for burglary, Mr. Deen decides to take matters into his own hands. He takes the kid in, questions and observes his actions and interests, and puts Nate’s photographic passion to work doing sets/backdrops for the school’s production of “Flowers for Algernon.”

Nate learns a few things about Mr. Deen — that he had dreams, that he came back to care for an infirm mother who recently died and that he’s not much of a housekeeper. And Mr. Deen slowly works his way towards understanding the kid his fellow teachers refer to as a “piece of trash,” the trauma of Nathan’s past.

“This too shall past,” he tells the boy, over and over, as Mr. Deen calls in favors in “the system” and takes his best shot at giving a child a chance, and maybe his own rewarding but disappointed life some purpose.

That phrase, “This too shall pass,” like the film’s generic cliche of a title, is banal in the extreme, another empty platitude in a movie full of them and a plot with little at stake and no edge.

And slapping another trademark Angel Studios, “Here’s the real guy this ‘true story’ is about to urge you to endorse this movie and ‘pay it forward’ by buying tickets for others” epilogue on “Brave the Dark” doesn’t change that.

The film glosses over how a teenager keeps a ’70s gas hog of a car going, much less feeds, grooms and clothes himself with no money as it avoids showing us how Nate navigates the difficult, energy and soul-sucking logistics of being homeless. There’s drama in that, and in keeping up the illusion that you’re not homeless to others.

The script never answers a question Nate asks on behalf of the viewer, “What’s your angle? Everybody’s got an angle, Stan.“

Harris plays Mr. Deen as an exhuberant “type,” that teacher who throws her or himself into their work and their students with such enthusiasm that he touches scores of lives each school year. Is it all a performance? Is he maintaining an illusion, just like Nate? What’s HIS story? Harris didn’t lobby for or reach for deeper insights into the character, and Deen’s big emotional moments just sort of arrive, they don’t build.

Jamie Harris plays the kid’s probation officer. The traditional Hollywood way of portraying such characters is to give a craggy, crusty-looking actor a leather jacket, which is all what we see here.

And young Hamilton has a hard time wringing any pathos out of this character the way he’s scripted. Nate is bland, even in his hot-tempered moments, which are rare, and his emotional epiphany, which is inexcusable.

While one appreciates any Angel Studios release that doesn’t lean on any particular agenda — it’s not overtly a “faith-based” film — “Brave the Dark” has too little else going on to ever make it much more than a way of passing the time.

Rating: PG-13, violence, teen drinking and drug abuse, some profanity

Cast: Jared Harris, Nicholas Hamilton, Sasha Bhasin, Will Price and Kimberly S. Fairbanks

Credits: Directed by Damian Harris, scripted by Lynn Robertson Hay and Dale G. Bradley, based on an original script by Nathaniel Deen and John P. Spencer. An Angel Studios release.

Running time: 1:52