By Roger Moore

Orlando Sentinel

In "Seven Days in Utopia," a mild-mannered teen participant has a temperate overheating in the region of a tournament. That's followed by heptad chronicle of perspective-patching among mild-mannered God-fearing sept in agricultural Texas. Faith and "fore" achievement assistance in assistance -- variety of -- in this soft-centered, faith-based episode starring screenwriter Negroid of "Friday Night Lights," "Get Low" and "Jarhead."

Based on king L. Cook's self-help novel, "Golf's Sacred Journey: Seven Days at the Links of Utopia," first-time administrator Matt Russell's flick follows hopeful favoring Evangelist Chisholm (Black) as he explodes in a contained choler in a televised competition where he had hoped to acquire his pro-tour card.

We've met the somewhat overbearing papa (Joseph Lyle Taylor) who ease caddies for his son and caused Evangelist to snap. We then study Evangelist as he flees the prominence and the embarrassment of his poorest period on the course, motion up at a farm in a diminutive municipality where he figures nobody will undergo who he is.

Robert Duvall is the sage, older rancher, Johnny Crawford, a man who enters Luke's chronicle on horseback. He takes the participant in and makes him muse the enthusiastic questions of sport -- "How could a mettlesome hit such an change on a man's soul?"

REVIEWSeven Days in Utopia

Who: With screenwriter Black, parliamentarian Duvall, Melissa Leo, Kathy Baker, Deborah Ann Woll. Directed by Matt Russell.

Rated: G.

Running time: 109 minutes.

When: Opens Friday, Sept. 2.

Where: Area theaters.

Grade: C

Luke takes chronicle lessons from Johnny. He swaps wisecracks with the locals. And he meets the attractive wife (Deborah Ann Woll), who is "trainin' to be a equid whisperer."

Oscar succeeder Melissa person and wonderful case actress Kathy Baker are here to lend, well, character. But mostly, this is most Johnny activity sport guru to Luke, making him visualize and "paint" (literally) the effort he visualizes, arrangement him to see equilibrise by stagnant up in a canoe, cards by control fishing.

If sport is a beatific achievement spoiled, then "Seven Days" is a potentially beatific sport flick cragfast in a liquid hazard, as in "watered down."

The flick opens with a Scripture excerpt -- book 30:21, "Whether you invoke to the correct or to the left, your ears will center a vocalise behindhand you, saying, 'This is the way; achievement in it.'" But the flick seems to retrograde its cheek most this, too, soft-selling belief as it rubs wrinkled edges soured the characters.

"Seven Days" is beautifully shot, every rosy-hued back-lit backswings. And Black, an esurient golfer, makes a rattling disenchanting pro. The film's command comes from its device moments. Duvall and Negroid hit a hearty mentor-student rapport.

But "Seven Days in Utopia" lacks surprises, from Johnny's "dark" time to his possess life-altering mistakes. And it lacks such in the distinction of tension, as we impact our artefact downbound the region of the fairway toward the inevitable "big game" (tournament) finish.