[yasr_overall_rating]
A small group of survivors are left behind after millions of people suddenly vanish and the world is plunged into chaos and destruction.
“Left Behind” tells the story of Captain Rayford Steele (Nicolas Cage), an airline pilot who is not having a very good day. He and his wife Irene (Lea Thompson) are not getting on since she has completely turned her life over to Jesus and their daughter Chloe (Cassi Thomson) is none too happy about it either as she feels that her mother is always pushing her religious views and beliefs on her. After flying home from college to surprise her dad for his birthday, she is beyond outraged when she discovers that he has accepted an assignment that will take him to London. She happens to see him at the airport, without his wedding ring, flirting with one of his beautiful flight attendants and they have a big argument where she ends up going home.
Rayford begins his long trek across the Atlantic and while Chloe and her younger brother Raymie (Major Dodson) are at the mall, he suddenly disappears into thin air, along with millions of others worldwide. The same happens to many of the passengers on Rayford’s plane and naturally, everybody who is left behind, is panicked. Word begins to spread that what happened was the Rapture, what fundamentalist Christians refer to as the beginning of the end of times. Many people don’t believe in God so understandably, they have a hard time trying to understand the events going on around them but the one thing they cannot deny, is that millions of people did indeed vanish without a trace with no logical explanation. With fear and dread lining the interior of his plane and no word from the outside world, Rayford decides to turn back to New York instead of flying on to London.
After a mid-air collision with another aircraft, Rayford’s plane begins leaking fuel and with New York still far away, he must try to calm his passengers and hope that he can make land soon. The film is based on the book of the same name by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, one of 16 best-selling novels that deals with the end of times. Kirk Cameron made “Left Behind” back in 2000 and it became a big hit so naturally, it was followed by “Tribulation Force” and “Left Behind: World at War.” The problem with this film is, quite simply, it relies on a plethora of schmaltzy, saccharine-filled sentiment. The story can’t seem to exist without the filmmakers telling you when to respond and exactly how. Our first scene introduces us to Rayford and his daughter Chloe but at this point in the movie, we know absolutely nothing about them or the kind of people they are.
But within the first few minutes of their conversation, we are suddenly overcome by an arrangement of slushy, tearful music that would normally accompany a death scene and we are expected to feel for these characters, two people we simply do not know. After their conversation ends, Chloe meets Buck Williams (Chad Michael Murray), a handsome and famous investigative journalist and they strike up a conversation but as soon as they sit down and she starts talking about her father, we get that sad music once more, the filmmakers telling us exactly how to feel. This is a constant throughout the movie and after a while, it becomes an irritation. Music in a movie should naturally blend in with the film, playing in the background to add a little to our emotions but it should never overpower the story onscreen and take over, that’s not the function of a film score, that’s the objective of the story.
Naturally, in a movie of this caliber, we are to expect some serious dramatic scenes but unfortunately, most of them come off as unintentionally laughable. Jordin Sparks plays the ex-wife of a professional football player who is traveling with her young daughter to London and when she disappears, like so many others throughout the plane, she assumes that she must have fallen asleep and that her ex paid everybody around her to act like she is going crazy. Ms. Sparks is a very talented singer and gave a very endearing performance in the indie drama “The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete” but here, sadly, she is let down by an absolutely terrible script that not even Meryl Streep could have saved and a lot of this falls on the shoulders of the film’s director, Vic Armstrong.
Mr. Armstrong is a legendary stuntman and stunt coordinator who doubled for Harrison Ford in the Indiana Jones movies and as James Bond and who eventually turned to directing, making an episode of the young Indiana Jones chronicles followed by his feature film directorial debut, “Army of One”, which starred Dolph Lundgren. I give Mr. Armstrong kudos for trying his hand at something new, reaching out past the obligatory, clichéd action movies of today and with “Left Behind”, it incorporates some scenes of action but it is mainly a drama. Regrettably, his stars were not aligned for this movie as even the dependable Nicolas Cage flounders in a script that is so decidedly soapy, it makes “Days of our Lives” look like “The Godfather.” Mr. Armstrong is the guy you go after when you want to stage a big, spectacular stunt and while he most certainly excels in this department, directing actors is not his strong suit and should therefore be relegated to the back seat of his career.
In theaters October 3rd
