Bob, the kid, is softer and more unformed. He hasn't been broken in (or down) by life on the road. It appears that the Big Kahuna did not visit their suite. But in the small hours of the morning, during a postmortem, Larry and Phil discover that the great man was indeed in the room, wearing someone else's name tag--and that Bob talked to him for hours. What did they talk about? The Big Kahuna was depressed by the death of his dog.

That led to a larger discussion, about a topic close to Bob's heart--his personal savior, Jesus Christ. Bob believes in Jesus like Larry and Phil believe in sales. "We talked about Christ," he says, quietly and simply, filled with enormous self-satisfaction. "About Christ ?" screams Larry. "Did you mention what line of industrial lubricant Jesus uses?" Those who are not true believers may be left cold by this film. For those who link their lives to a cause, it may have a real resonance. The tricky thing may be realizing that the two systems are interchangeable. If Larry and Phil believed in Jesus, and Bob wanted to land the big contract, the dialogue could stay about the same, because the story is about their personalities, not their products.

Now here's a funny thing. This movie premiered last January at Sundance. A lot has been written about it since then. You can read about the actors, the dialogue, the convention, the Kahuna, the industrial lubricants. But you can search the reviews in vain for any mention of Jesus Christ. Most of the reviewers seem to have forgotten that Bob is born again. Maybe it never registered. From their secular viewpoint, what they remember is that Bob had the Kahuna in the palm of his hand and blew the deal, but they don't remember why.

That underlines how, once you sign on to a belief system, you see everything through that prism, and anything outside it becomes invisible. "The Big Kahuna" is remarkable in the way it shows the two big systems in conflict. Of course, there is such a species as the Christian businessman, who has his roots in a strain of the Protestant ethic. He believes that prospering and being saved go hand in hand. Maybe Bob was on to something. Maybe he had the right approach to Dick Fuller. Maybe that's why Fuller is the Big Kahuna.

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