Left Behind (2014)
Starring Nicolas Cage, Cassi Thompson, Chad Michael Murray, Nicky Whelan, Jordin Sparks, Lea Thompson, Nicolas Cage’s Hair
Directed by Vic Armstrong
The remake of Left Behind is a movie that seems to have been designed to make what is ostensibly fundamentalist Christian propaganda more palatable to mainstream audiences and in so doing results in a movie I cannot imagine satisfying anyone, believer or otherwise. The message is muted, thrills are nil, and even the camp value is in short supply. This is truly “The Crapture.”
Unlike the original Left Behind starring Kirk Cameron, this time there is no Antichrist, no government conspiracies, and no underground Christian resistance movements battling the forces of Tribulation. I don’t even recall the word “Rapture” ever being uttered. Despite some heavy-handed yet still nowhere near as heavy-handed as you’d expect religiosity, the Rapture is merely the plot device used as the basis for what is little more than a lame airline disaster melodrama. As if the producers chose to do a 90-minute remake of the original’s first act. Say what you will about the Kirk Cameron version, it was far more ambitious than this cash-in.
Speaking of cashing-in, let’s not beat around the bush and get right to why most people have any interest in this film at all: Nicolas Cage. Unfortunately, anyone hoping to see Cage camp it up with his special brand of over-the-top acting will be sorely disappointed. You’ve heard of paycheck acting? This is tax lien acting. Cage delivers his lines with a modicum of conviction, and by the second half he rarely even leaves the pilot seat.
That leaves the bulk of the histrionics in the air to Chad Michael Murray as a famous journalist mingling with the panicked passengers aboard the plane and Cassi Thompson as Cage’s distraught daughter, Chloe, on ground level wondering where her mom (Lea Thompson, in little more than a cameo) and little brother have vanished to.
We’re told that every kid on Earth has been called up to heaven. This left me pondering what the Lord’s cut-off age for automatic Rapturing is. And what about those genocidal kids in Africa gunning people down and hacking them up with machetes? Do they get the innocence of a child pass as well?
Chloe’s come home from college for her birthday to surprise dad only to discover he’s been called in to pilot a flight to London. This makes her angry in the shrillest, whiniest, most self-absorbed manner possible. Mom has recently found Christ and now cannot stop trying to spread the word to every member of the family. This makes Chloe even more irritable. Dad is not wearing his wedding ring and Chloe catches him being all chummy with pretty stewardess Nicky Whelan. Cue more all-about-me bitching. Then mom and her baby brother get taken up to heaven – if you thought Chloe was an irritating whiner before…
For most of the movie I absolutely detested the Chloe character until I came to realize that this may actually be the perfect depiction of how a dimwitted, egotistical, crybaby millennial would react to the Rapture. Walking about in clueless haze, all woe-is-me in her attitude, dumb as a post when it comes to making the most obvious conclusions, ready to jump off a bridge (literally!) rather than deal with hardships: almost brilliant satire, even if it was most assuredly unintentional.
The only person Chloe never has a terse word with is unlikely potential love interest Chad Michael Murray. A well-meaning if somewhat annoying woman begins lecturing him in the airport about how all the global disasters he’s been reporting on are Biblical prophecy only to be interrupted by a less well-intended girl who annoyingly insults the woman for having such stupid religious beliefs. All Murray’s character can think afterwards is he needs to get to know that obnoxious girl better. I’d say they’re a match made in heaven, but seeing as how they both get left behind…
Once the Rapture finally occurs after what felt like an eternity of tedious Hallmark Hall of Fame melodramatics, Left Behind turns into a tepid disaster thriller in the air and The Asylum’s “Z Nation”-style mockbuster version of “The Leftovers” on the ground.
Frightened passengers do a lot of arguing and experience tearful come-to-Jesus whoops-too-late moments while Nic Cage lifelessly acts his way through a series of tired airline disaster movie tropes, most of which resolve themselves in a matter of moments without any suspense. Like when the plane’s wing catches fire and one scene later the fire’s already out.
The plane is populated by a series of colorful characters that ultimately serve no purpose. Okay, not entirely. There is that one amusing scene where the Muslim passenger suggests everyone on the plane say a prayer only to incur the wrath on an all-American dwarf. Sure, the Muslim is presented as the most devoutly religious character in the entire film, but he worships the wrong god – oh, well.
Lest I forget Jordin Sparks as a distraught gun-toting momma convinced that her daughter’s disappearance is part of a plane-wide conspiracy perpetrated by her NFL superstar ex-husband; a conspiracy that requires us to believe that she’s crazy enough to actually believe she was drugged, the plane landed, her husband got on and took their daughter, the plane took off again, and everyone onboard has been paid off to lie to her, completely ignoring the fact that other passengers have also vanished into thin air.
Down on the ground, Chloe sets off on a journey to the mall parking lot, the hospital, the church, home, anywhere she thinks her kid brother must have run off to after he stripped off his clothes and vanished in her arms in the blink of an eye. Did I not tell you she’s portrayed as a blithering idiot? Doing so requires her to survive in a world where people now run around aimlessly and loot the same HD TV box over and over again, thieves on motor scooters perpetrate drive-by purse snatchings, driverless vehicles crash, causing not nearly as much damage as you’d expect, mothers whose babies have been Raptured spend every waking moment since weeping next to their empty strollers, and snippets of television news reports tease us with all the far more interesting End Times action happening around the globe.
Storylines converge for the stunningly preposterous climax that sees Chloe trying to help daddy and impromptu co-pilot Murray land the plane in a sequence so laughable it would feel more at home in an Airplane reboot than a Left Behind remake.
Stuntman-turned-director Vic Armstrong directs it all with made-for-television blandness. Combined with a meaningless, meandering, and moronic script by Left Behind book author Paul Lalonde and John Patus, as I stated at the outset, I cannot imagine this movie truly satisfying anyone. No tension. No mystery. No genuine emotions. No real religious conviction. A few moments of ludicrousness are its only saving grace, and even that’s not enough for fans of bad movies.
As for anyone questioning my faith for giving this a scathing review, I know God is real because only He could have created that miraculous hairpiece atop Nic Cage’s head throughout the film.
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Film
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Nicolas Cage's Hair
Categorized:Reviews
