Heartwarming: New Hallmark Christmas Movie Features Widowed Mother and War Criminal Finding True Love and International Amnesty

While Hallmark has always excelled at creating world-class Christmas movies, their new film, “Missile-toe,” is their best yet. In this ninety minute made-for-television Christian rom-com, Holly – a widowed mother who owns her family’s mistletoe factory – slowly develops feelings for Dimka, a disgraced war criminal. Throughout the movie, Holly struggles to keep her business alive in order to make enough money to care for her generically wise-beyond-her-years daughter. All the while, Dimka fights to escape international punishment from the Hague for his war crimes.

In an attempt to avoid consequences for his indiscriminate murder of civilians, Dimka has fled his home country of Lithuvatnia, a fictional, vaguely European monarchy where he served as a general before he used a missile strike to target civilians in a neighboring warring country and became a war criminal. In a serendipitous moment during his escape journey, he finds himself in Holly’s Christmas-loving hometown, Cedarjollyville. He decides to take refuge in the town’s vacant mistletoe factory. Then, in a nearly unbelievable meet-cute moment, Dimka encounters Holly looking through her stock. Because Holly is a one-dimensional character who is both overly welcoming and always happy, she embraces her war criminal intruder and offers him a place to stay for the holidays. Dimka, always craftily looking for a way to survive, accepts the offer, although he is fully prepared to lay waste to the whole town if Holly ever discovers his true identity. Sure enough, this Christmas-loving woman slowly begins to transform Dimka from a hardened murderer who hates Christmas into a slightly less hardened murderer who can tolerate Christmas and resist the urge to burn everything down with a flamethrower.

In keeping with the Hallmark film tradition, this is also rife with romantic drama. Holly has reservations with trusting another man after the death of her husband – the only man she ever dated. Yet, with the help of Holly’s best friend (who happens to be the only person of color in this blindingly white Hallmark film), as well as Holly’s 8-year-old child, she learns to forgive the otherwise perfect, war-obsessed, child-bombing psychopath. In the last scene, Dimka finds out he has been granted worldwide amnesty thanks to an unexplained Christmas Miracle, and Holly and Dimka share their one obligatory kiss underneath her great-grandfather’s sprig of mistletoe.

So, if you are looking for a heartwarming, family-friendly Christmas story of true love and civilian murder, check out “Missile-toe,” playing only on the Hallmark channel for the rest of the month.