Left Behind
starring Nicolas Cage, Chad Michael Murray, Cassi Thomson, Nicky Whelan, Jordan Sparks and Lea Thompson
screenplay by Paul Lalonde and John Patus
directed by Vic Armstrong
Rating: ♦♦◊◊◊
Based on the novel of the same name by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Left Behind is an apocalyptic thriller about the Rapture. What is the Rapture? The Bible tells us that before the End of the World begins the righteous will be gathered to heaven. They will simply disappear wherever they are, whatever they are doing. Driving, cooking, shopping, playing sports, poof they’re gone. You can imagine how that could cause a lot of mayhem.
When I rented the DVD I thought from the cover illustration that it was going to be an air crash disaster movie. Then after it started I thought, okay, it’s going to be a religious end-of-the-world movie. But it tried to split the difference between the two and the result is a theologically illiterate story leaving me unsatisfied. I wanted a plane crash.
Nicolas Cage plays Rayford Steels, an airline pilot whose wife has become extremely Christian evangelical religious in the wake of their marital problems. The couple’s adult daughter has no patience with her mother’s new found faith and resists her mother’s testimonials. The daughter’s rejection of Christianity is the typical ill-informed, off target atheist clap-trap. I regret that most Christians within the world of Hollywood movies - whether the street-preacher lady who confronts the hero at the airport, or Rayford Steele's wife - are portrayed as insistent, crazy, delusional, or at the very least just really annoying. People of faith - Christians, Muslims, Jews or whatever - are intelligent people. Everyone has a different level of articulation about their faith, so different people give different impressions. If you listened to a Christian lecture by Ravi Zacharias, for example, you would probably be really impressed.
If you listened to a Christian lecture by Ravi Zacharias you would probably be really impressed.
When Rapture comes, some people of Rayford’s flight simple vanish in front of people. Other passengers begin to panic. Interestingly, the pilot deliberately decompresses the passenger cabin, causing everyone on the plane to pass out, as a passenger-control strategy. I’ve never seen or heard of that before. I suppose it’s possible, but is it legal?
“How does someone see an earthquake on the news and then try to convince everyone that’s a good thing. Does that even make sense to you?”
If you look hard enough you will see whatever it is you’re looking for.