Review: 'Witnesses' is more compelling when it covers the after-effects of religious faith, rather than the small details.

As is customary with movies that cover the history and doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the drama “Witnesses” will have different meaning and impact depending on whether the viewer is a believer in the faith.

For members, there’s nothing new in the movie’s overview of the church’s early history. They will nod with recognition at the steps of Joseph Smith’s journey — receiving the golden plates on which were written The Book of Mormon, working to translate the ancient language on those plates, and how he and his flock were persecuted across New York and the Midwest.

Non-members will likely get stuck on how director Mark Goodman shows details of that history that, from an outside perspective, seem a little ludicrous. One example: The part where Smith (played by Paul Wuthrich) is looking at a “seer stone” in his hat as he translates the golden plates.

This is not meant to belittle my Latter-day Saint neighbors or their faith. Consider for a moment “The Book of Mormon,” Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s irreverent musical about Latter-day Saint missionaries trying to explain their faith to incredulous Africans. The story of The Book of Mormon (the actual book, not the play) may sound strange to those unfamiliar with it, Parker and Stone say — because, at heart, the origin stories of every religion sound weird when you say them out loud. The play’s message is that a faith’s value is not in the arcana, but in how it inspires its people to be better and kinder.

Smith is the focus of the first half of “Witnesses,” written by veteran Latter-day Saint filmmaker Mitch Davis (who directed one of the first “Mormon Cinema” movies, 2001’s “The Other Side of Heaven”). Smith is such a charismatic figure, able to persuade crowds and sway grown men toward his fledgling religion, that he’s sure to overwhelm any movie about the church’s early days.

When Goodman and Davis first show us Smith, he’s seen as a man of action — running through a forest, trying to protect the plates from the men hunting him down. He’s larger than life, and such figures are more appropriate for statues, not flesh-and-blood movie characters.

Eventually, as the title promises, the view turns to the three men who scribed for Smith, who saw firsthand the translation work and vouched for the miracle they believed Smith was performing. The three were Martin Harris (Lincoln Hoppe), a neighbor of Smith’s and an early convert, and two more converts who joined Smith in upstate New York: Oliver Cowdery (Caleb J. Spivak) and David Whitmer (Michael Zuccola).

It’s in the stories of these men where “Witnesses” gets interesting, as Goodman and Davis (who had collaborated previously on a 2017 docudrama, “Joseph Smith: American Prophet”) depict the struggles and sacrifices the men made because they stuck to their accounts. They faced ridicule, angry mobs, death threats and — when they openly disagreed with Smith during the church’s early days — excommunication. The fact that they continued to trust in their faith, and their founder, is both spiritually inspirational and dramatically compelling.

One might wish that Goodman and Davis had kept Smith an enigmatic side character, and focused more on how these three followers persevered in his wake. Smith makes for a good sermon, but the human story produces drama worth watching on a movie screen.

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‘Witnesses’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, June 4, in theaters across Utah. Rated PG for violence and thematic elements. Running time: 110 minutes.