LEFT BEHIND

LEFT BEHIND is in theory a movie about the biblical prophecy about the rapture, an event cited in the bible where God will take some people to heaven and leave others behind to struggle in a Godless chaotic world. Oscar Winner NICHOLAS CAGE stars as Ray Steele, an airline pilot poised to commit adultery on the very day of this predicted event. His wife Irene, played by LEA THOMSON, is a devout catholic getting ready for the rapture every single day. But it is the daughter Chloe Steele, played by CASSI THOMSON, that is the protagonist to Ray Steele as they work to save the airplane he is driving in the second half of the movie.

This movie is so bad it boggles the mind! It does serve up many of modern man's views on God that suffer irreparably from the warped views of ignorant and biassed interpreters of scriptures, not to mention the use made through the centuries by egomaniacs  that used God, the concept of God, to serve their own agendas.

I laugh every time I hear a person, real or fictive, say something like: "He is God right, He can stop earthquakes if he wants to." Why? Because it assumes we understand what is a priori claimed as the greatest mystery by all religions. It assumes God is at our service and at our disposal, that if things don't work out the way our ego would like then it also assumes a whole new set of facts not in evidence, that there is no God, that He punishes those that don't read the bible, the infidels, and so on. This is however the philosophical foundation of this film. Then the film makers, in their efforts to make it a blockbuster, threw in the flying unmanned exploding vehicles, fire in the streets and so on.

Sadly, you don't even get one moment of rapture from this movie. Leave this one behind.

-LENA GHIO