The "Ultimate" Trilogy
- Chris Barembruch
- Apr 9
- 6 min read
Updated: Apr 21
A Movie Review
By C.J. Barembruch | I Am Is and Was ™
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I want to tell you about a man named Dave.
I was young and angry when I knew him. The kind of angry that comes from watching the world seem easy for everyone else while you are working twice as hard just to keep up. Dave was one of those people the world seemed to work for effortlessly. The kind of man who would mention casually that a van might be useful — and a week later someone would be giving one away for free.
It made me furious.
So one day I asked him why. Why does it work like that for you and not for me? It isn't fair.
He offered to teach me.
I jumped at it. I thought he was going to hand me some secret. Some trick. Some shortcut the rest of us hadn't figured out yet.
What he gave me was a door.
Literally.
He said: for the foreseeable future — until this is no longer a task but a lived practice — every time you go through a door, you look back. If someone is coming to that same door you stand there and hold it. No matter how far back they are. No matter how long it takes. You made a vow. You hold the door.
I laughed. That's it?
That's it.
The next day I was late for work. The day after I left forty five minutes earlier. Weeks went by. I held hundreds of doors. I stood there patient and then impatient and then patient again. I got nothing but the occasional smile. Some people didn't even look up.
And then one day a man walked the full length of the corridor to reach the door I was holding. Smiled at me. Walked through. And then ran to the next door — and stood there holding it for me.
That was the moment everything changed.
Not because of what he did. Because of what happened inside me.
I stopped holding doors because I had to.
I started holding them because I wanted to.
And when that shift happened — when the giving stopped being obligation and became something I genuinely wanted to do — the universe started doing things I still cannot explain.
Dave didn't teach me a luck trick.
He taught me which direction to face.
The Ultimate Gift - 2006
Rent or own The Ultimate Gift - Here
Here is what you need to know.
A man of incomprehensible wealth dies. His family gathers — generations of them — each one carrying their own expectation of what they are about to receive.
Most of them get nothing.
But his grandson Jason — the one he damaged most, the one who wanted nothing from him — gets something different. An offer. A series of gifts. And a condition attached to every single one of them.
Accept every gift — no matter what it costs you — and something waits at the end.
Refuse even one — and you walk away with nothing.
What follows is not what Jason expected.
It's not what you expect either.
Each gift is a door.
And the only way to find out what is waiting on the other side is to walk through every single one of them yourself.
This is one of my all time favourite films. It is on the shelf at iamisandwas.com because it belongs here — not as entertainment, but as a mirror. Watch it and ask yourself which side of the door you are standing on right now.
The Ultimate Gift is available on Prime Video for rent or purchase.
Note: Amazon frequently rotates their library. Please check Prime at the link above to see if this is currently included with your membership at no extra cost.
This film is the first in a trilogy. Continue the journey with The Ultimate Life and The Ultimate Legacy — both reviewed on this shelf.
Directed by: Michael O. Sajbel
Starring: Drew Fuller, James Garner, Abigail Breslin, Brian Dennehy, Bill Cobbs, Ali Hillis
Rated: PG
Runtime: 114 minutes
Released: 2006
The Ultimate Life — 2013
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You can own or rent The Ultimate Life - Here
Jason Stevens survived the gifts.
He did the work. He walked through every door. He earned what his grandfather left him — not the money, but the understanding of what the money was actually for.
And then life happened.
Because that is what life does. It does not stop testing you once you pass the first exam. It waits until you think you have figured something out — and then it hands you a harder version of the same question.
In The Ultimate Life Jason is no longer the angry young man learning to hold a door open. He is a man running a billion dollar foundation, fighting a legal battle from people who want to take it from him, and watching the woman he loves walk away from everything he has built to go serve people who have nothing.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it — he finds his grandfather's journal.
What Red Stevens built — the empire, the wealth, the legacy — did not start where Jason thought it did. The journal takes him back. To the beginning. To the man before the money. To every door Red Stevens had to walk through before he became the grandfather who could leave twelve gifts behind.
If The Ultimate Gift asked you which side of the door you are standing on —
The Ultimate Life asks you something harder.
What did it cost the person who built the door?
This is not as strong a film as the first. Honesty requires saying that. The production is smaller, the pacing uneven, and the emotional weight of the original is difficult to match.
But the story it tells — the origin of a man who understood real wealth — is worth sitting with. Especially if The Ultimate Gift already found you.
Watch the first. Then watch this one.
The Ultimate Life is available on Prime Video for rent or purchase.
Note: Amazon frequently rotates their library. Please check Prime at the link above to see if this is currently included with your membership at no extra cost.
Start with The Ultimate Gift if you haven't already. Then come back here.
Directed by: Michael Landon Jr.
Starring: Logan Bartholomew, Peter Fonda, Ali Hillis, Bill Cobbs, Lee Meriwether, James Garner
Rated: PG
Runtime: 104 minutes
Released: 2013
The Ultimate Legacy — 2015
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
You can rent or own The Ultimate Legacy - Here
There is a line at the heart of this trilogy that the third film finally says out loud.
When we learn something — we change our own life. When we teach something — we change another's life. But when we teach people to teach — we change the world.
That is the whole empire of iamisandwas.com in three sentences. And it is the reason The Ultimate Legacy belongs on this shelf even as the closing chapter of a trilogy that peaked early.
Jason Stevens is no longer the student.
He is the teacher now.
And a young man named Joey Anderson is about to be handed the same kind of offer Jason once received — not money, not comfort, not the easy inheritance — but a challenge. A series of gifts. A chance to become something worth leaving behind.
The question The Ultimate Legacy asks is the one this entire empire is built on.
When you are gone — what remains?
Not what you accumulated. Not what you protected. Not what you kept.
What you gave away.
What you taught.
Who you changed.
That is the legacy.
Watch all three in order. The first is the one that will stay with you longest. But the third is the one that answers the question the first one planted.
The Ultimate Legacy is available on Prime Video for rent or purchase.
Note: Amazon frequently rotates their library. Please check Prime at the link above to see if this is currently included with your membership at no extra cost.
Directed by: JoAnne Hock
Starring: Myko Olivier, Raquel Welch, Logan Bartholomew, Doug Jones, Brian Dennehy, Ali Hillis, Bill Cobbs, Lee Meriwether
Rated: PG
Runtime: 90 minutes
Released: 2015
Namaste. 👋
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