“Faith Under Fire” (**1/2 out of four) was an earnest but superficial melodrama based on a true story about a school guidance counselor (Toni Braxton) who has to talk to and appease a deranged gunman (Trevor Morgan) who threatens and besieges her Atlanta school and their children while the police outside try to contain situation and have him killed. Braxton is good as a woman who tries to keep her cool and stay alive while facing certain death but Morgan is frustratingly one-note and so is the movie at times although it does build interest and suspense towards the end. A sincere effort from actor-director Vondie Curtis Hall but this cannot match the power or intensity of his 1996 Tupac/Tim Roth drama “Gridlock’d.”