Source: Wikipedia

Some were saved, and some were...

Look guys, I am sorry, I really am. While nowhere near the 2% that critics say it is (I mean who really listens to them anyway) it isn't much better. Left Behind is a very odd film, that has a pretty decent set up and does absolutely nothing with it. I'm going to assume you've seen the trailer for the movie and if you haven't seen it, here it is. I really hate doing this, I hate coming here being some douche with a keyboard ready to just tear into a movie, because no matter what I see, (unless its Movie 43 or The Devil Inside) I realize how much time and effort goes into a movie and any movie that gets made is its own little miracle, it is incredibly hard to have all these people come together to make a movie and I wouldn't know where to start and I can't imagine how it must feel to spend nearly a year of your life making something to have everyone criticise it but I cannot lie and I know that my reviews here have become their little own entity, so, here we go. 

The movie has a very distinct pattern, nothing will happen for awhile and then something big will happen to get you interested and then looses the pace completely, rinse and repeat a few times and then there you have Left Behind. The story is quite simple, people all around the world suddenly disappear and the remaining people who are still on Earth have to work out what is going on, that is the basic set up but you'd expect more to happen, right? Well you'd be wrong, for the first 25 minutes nothing happens, they try to give development to the characters which is always appreciated but I didn't feel very invested in what is going on, a lot of it felt quite forced but that is mostly in these opening minutes. As soon as I was about to check my watch, finally, something happened and people suddenly vanished, I thought finally that the movie would kick into gear but after about 10 minutes it looses the thread again and just lingers on conversations that don't add anything and feel like filler. And that happened quite a lot actually, there were too many gaps of nothing happening. Some things just don't make sense, one character just brings a gun out of thin air on the plane and starts waving it around, another character says where did you get that from and I was thinking the exact same thing, how do you bring a gun on a plane? Another character states they know what is going on and then just walks off, I mean was anyone even paying attention?

The acting is one of the only positives I can think of, everybody looks and feels like they're really trying to make something out of nothing with this, they all play their parts well and really try to sell what is going on, I liked them. I wish I had made note of this earlier and maybe I did but after watching the trailer for the first time I wondered if Nicolas Cage was going to be in this movie a lot, all the scenes of him in the trailer are from inside the plane (this is before I realized the whole movie was in the plane) and I thought he would only be on screen for a little while. Little did I know that I was absolutely right, Nicolas Cage is on screen for a grand total of around 20 minutes, if even that. I'm wondering if they couldn't afford him or something, it's just bizarre, they don't show him for such a long time that I forgot he was even in it. If anything I thought they'd use him to market the movie, which makes sense because he is a big name but wow! For the little time he does have, he feels incredibly earnest and god bless him, he really tries, the parts where he has to cry are some of the best. Honestly, I'm kind of glad he isn't in it much. 

source: http://iwatchstuff.com/

Nicolas Cage just realized what movie he is in.

For a religious based movie I have to say I am quite thankful that nothing is shoved in our faces, besides the obvious set up for the plot and some things some characters talk about it is fairly light on any head bashing preaching, which I am sure some of you will be happy to hear. At the start I got worried because within the first 5 minutes there was already a woman quoting the Bible telling someone why they were wrong and I just facepalmed and thought, 'here we go; it begins' but I am glad to say that I was wrong. There is even a conversation with Cassi Thomson's character talking to Lea Thompson's character about how religion ruined their family and that got my attention and I thought that was a pretty powerful moment, I wish there were more moments like this one. In the set up for everyone being taken away, they did show people 'committing sins' like drinking or gambling and it felt a bit forced but it makes sense why it's there.

The music is what kills me the most, it is possibly the worst thing in the movie, it is incredibly cheesy to the point of making me cringe. It's any given pop song of the month that tries to evoke emotion and make you feel something but it sounds like something you'd hear in a direct to DVD Disney movie, it is very distracting. There is a scene where a character is standing on something tall and they are looking down and the cheesy song just completely took me out of it. It just sounds like really generic music you'd hear on an after school special or something, it's so pedestrian. I wish I could say more about the songs but I have already forgotten them and I'm writing this right after I finished the movie which was less than an hour ago. 

Vic Armstrong is a legendary stunt coordinator and has done over 100 films in his career, most notably Indiana Jones, but in this film quite a lot of the stunt work looks bad and really cheap, I understand the budget for this isn't even 20 million dollars but from the looks of it, it just feels like they were saving all the money for the final few shots, which to be fair, actually look good. 

Saying all this though, I was interested to see where the movie was going to go next, it went by rather quickly and it kept my interest throughout, at least after that initial 25 minutes and surprisingly the movie actually had quite a good sense of humor, quite a lot of the time jokes were being told and they were actually funny! And the final few scenes were cool and exciting to watch.

source: .timeinc.net

Nicolas Cage always does his best with whatever he is given.

It got to me moments before the end that this movie wasn't really about anything at all, it's just a bunch of stuff happening for an hour and forty and then it just ends with an awful sequel bait. I understand that this is part one in a trilogy, planned trilogy mind you, but c'mon guys, more needs to happen in a film than just landing a plane. Nic hasn't even signed on for the next one! I hope it starts off right where this one ended, but if Nic isn't in it... I dunno if I'll watch it or not. I thought it'd have characters wandering aimlessly around a barren wasteland talking to each other about their lives and the sins they've committed and then die at the end or something, I thought the plane business would have been over in the first half at least. You have a set up for the end of the world and it doesn't feel like it. You have this amazing concept and you don't do anything with it. Take the very few religious conversations out of it and the film is just about a plane disaster which would have been infinitely more interesting. I do think Left Behind would work better as a TV show but there are only so many times you can reboot something, but this IS Hollywood, so who knows? Left Behind reminds me of Atlas Shrugged, something that has terrible reviews but has a few sequels and a devoted fanbase. I didn't love it but that doesn't mean you have to either and if you liked it, more power to you, have fun. 

Someone on Rotten Tomatoes said they pictured this film with Nicolas Cage running around the wasteland punching devils in the face and that right there would have been awesome. I don't understand you, Nic, I really don't. You star in The Frozen Ground stating that you want to go back to your roots and then Joe comes out which was fantastic then Tokarev was a great action film and then this happened. When the movie finished I thought, 'oh it wasn't that bad', but the more I thought about it, the more the negatives of the movie started creeping in. I'm really sorry, I know this isn't what you want to hear and I feel bad disliking a movie this much, let alone a Nic Cage movie but jeez, I don't know what happened here. 




I've re-read this so many times it doesn't even look like anything anymore, if there are any problems, I'm sorry. And if you're still here, thanks for reading.