Robert Duvall has a face that can carry a movie. That's not meant in an Uma Thurman/Kevin Costner kind of way, either. He's certainly not a marquee performer, and one would be hard-pressed to classify him as a "heartthrob." Rather, Duvall's face carries a film through the quiet genius of expression. His is not a wildly emotive face, like Jenny McCarthy or Jim Carrey. Instead, it is a mask through which glimmers of character and emotion are slipped slowly, sweetly, with immeasurable subtlety and understanding. You can read novels into the lines in that mask, the ways his wrinkled skin tenses and relaxes with his every emotion. Duvall is clever enough to know that the key to a great film acting performance is to reveal character slowly through gesture and reaction, allowing the character to build for the audience over the course of the movie. In this sense, his face becomes the window to his character, almost more important than his lines or his vocal and emotional interpretations of them. The words, the tears, the laughs and shouts of "Glory" and "Praise God"--they are relevant because they have escaped from a face that somehow manages to reveal more in its expressions than any words or sounds ever could. Whether there is tension between emotion and expression, or the two support and enhance each other, it all seems to begin with the face for Duvall. It's the canvas on which he sketches a character's soul.

In Duvall's "The Apostle," his exquisite performance is made all the more remarkable by the fact that he also wrote, directed, and executive produced this film. The script has been in various stages of composition since 1984, and when no major studio would pick up the project, Duvall financed the $5 million dollar movie himself. Duvall portrays an evangelical preacher in Texas who is driven to become The Apostle E.F. after he violently beats and kills the man who stole his wife and caused his divorce. The Apostle E.F. emerges as the leader of a small and spirited church in Louisiana, still haunted by the single act of violence that has come to define his life and pursued by the police for his crime. He leaves his old life behind seeking redemption and finds it, but he cannot escape the earthly consequences of his deeds.

Duvall is the centerpiece of this film. He drives the action with his performance, his writing, and his understated direction. It is as much a pure product of his art as "Titanic" is a product of James Cameron. Like any good director, Duvall has taken the trouble to surround his "star" with a fantastic supporting cast. In her few scenes, Farrah Fawcett is tremendous as the Apostle's ex-wife, who has lost her faith in her husband and in his love for her over the course of one too many affairs. Miranda Richardson is also excellent (and also under-used) as a woman whom the Apostle awkwardly romances in his new town.

If the movie has a weakness, it's that the focus may remain too tight on Duvall's character and performance. At times, the other characters in the film seem like stock figures, dug up from the stereotypes of the south and the bayou and dusted off to bounce lines with the Apostle. Especially awkward is the sequence involving Billy Bob Thornton as a nameless racist who in a few short scenes with the Apostle goes from a deep hatred for blacks to a loving understanding through the grace of God. Such conversions are certainly possible, but are rarely as lifelessly written and awkwardly placed.

Yet the tight focus is in some sense appropriate because this movie is about the Apostle and his path to redemption. If the other characters seem to take a back seat to the Apostle, it could be because in the eyes of the Lord, saving one sheep is more important than guiding 99 sheep who will follow and serve. It's a testimony to his directing and writing skills that Duvall seems to know this and keeps the movie tight on his own character, and on the face which tells its story so powerfully.