The male characters are the strongest, or at least the best developed. Malcom McDowell's Desmond LaRochette is the man who controls the fate of all of the members of the List. McDowell does sinister very well here, no surprise. His character wants to make Renny in his own image, grooming him to take over the List since LaRochette has no children to pass membership to. Like other evil movie dads before him, he does seem to honestly care for his surrogate child. It's all about the power, though, so he doesn’t skimp on the "tough love" and cuts Renny's legs out from under him on more than one occasion. I also enjoyed the character of Renny. It would have been easy to make his faults very shallow, but his greed and brokenness run deep. So deep, it has the problem of making his rather quick conversion late in the picture a little hard to swallow.

Sadly, the female characters get a bit of a short shrift. Jo Johnston, played by VJ Hilarie Burton, has a lot of potential as a foil to Renny's flaws. She does appear to be made of sterner stuff, but doesn't get a chance to actually do much. I sensed that there was a lot of her character left behind in the editing process. Daisy Stokes (Mary Beth Peil) is Renny's landlady and one mother figure in his life. A former missionary, she provides some solid spiritual grounding, but does very little in the way of actively helping Renny. His other mother is Mama A (Elisabeth Omilami), the nanny that raised him. She provides us with some exposition concerning the families represented by Jo and Renny. She could have been so much more than a plot device, though. That's not to say that these characters aren't engaging or necessary. The performances are great. I just wanted to see more of them.

According to Wheeler, this is a movie about prayer, and that was what they focused on here as a way of condensing the story. Unfortunately, prayer here is a little like the magic in Harry Potter's universe. If you're in trouble you just say the right words and everything eventually goes right. These prayers heal, convert, and save folks from their circumstances so they are powerful indeed—but most of the onscreen prayer takes the form of repetitious petitioning and is less about a conversation with God. Don't get me wrong; the characters' prayers can't do it all. They don't remove bad consequences or grant rewards that would seem to be out of step with God's will. So as a movie about prayer, it does work.

Overall, I really liked The List. It's beautifully shot, thanks to Tom Priestley, Jr. The story drew me in. The characters and actors kept me there. It's not often I see something as complex as prayer treated with the weight it deserves and at the same time refraining from preachiness. It pushed all of the right buttons emotionally and even made me jump once or twice. It's driven me to want to check out the novel and I can't wait to see what Wheeler has in store for us in his next project.