Last year I was perusing YouTube when I noticed a reference in a comment to a new "Left Behind" movie. This I would have just ignored, until I read, "...with Nicholas Cage."
"No," I said to myself, "There's no way that could possibly happen."
A quick search of YouTube however showed that yes, oh yes, it was quite possible and quite real.
At that point I didn't go see it in the theater because I'm a recluse and I couldn't drag anyone to go see it, no matter how much they agreed in principle that it would be a train wreck.
Yesterday morning, I was walking out of a CVS and noticed "Left Behind," being advertised on the Redbox screen. Why the hell not?
I'm saddened to report, this isn't the movie I was expecting, but was instead a competently made movie, not an hour and a half of Nic Cage hamming it up with a back drop of Rapture theology.
The best way to describe the overall quality of the film, production wise, is an episode of a CBS dramatic series with an entire season's budget spent on one episode. It's competent, nothing more, nothing less. A quick perusal of La Wik's quotes of reviews suggests that the critics who hated it, went in wanting to hate it, and came out hating it. (I went in wanting a cheeze fest, but instead got an overachieving TV-movie.)
The Christian themes are subdued throughout and characters who are skeptical unbelievers are portrayed very sympathetically throughout. Arguably the most positively portrayed character of faith in the movie is a Muslim. There's a character that does an airport witness at the beginning, and she's portrayed as a bit of a nutter. As Christian propaganda, it's the subtle Christian propaganda.
The script is an improvement of the source material, the books being barely literate garbage, with the last book ending with Kal-el, urrr Jesus, tossing around some tanks. (I read the first book a few years ago, it being only a $1 at a used book store. To say it was written at a fourth grade level is charitable. I did skim the last book without buying it, and I'm not exaggerating about Jesus as Superman. Not by much, anyway.) All of the insane plot points (yes, arguably the Rapture is insane, but for the sake of argument...) from the book and the Kirk Cameron movie are absent from this movie.
(Instead of insisting on calling the main characters 'Buck' and 'Rayford' throughout, the filmmakers wisely rename them 'Cameron' and 'Ray', improving the verisimilitude of the experience.)
Do I recommend it? I suppose it you want a competent, somewhat serious movie exploring what would go down if the Rapture actually happened. The scenes of chaos after millions of people (and all of the world's children) disappear are done well, considering the budget constraints. In fact a real film maker might want to explore the realistic implications of what would go down if the actual scenario of the Rapture as outlined in the "Left Behind" theology took place. Will that ever happen? Probably not, Christianity being culturally radioactive, especially in movies.
Is there any cheeze at all? There's some bad CGI of a mid-air collision and a family photo that was made by someone incompetent at Photoshop.
The movie fails because the director lacked the intellectual chops to make a complex movie that would thematically speak to both unbelievers and believers, but he didn't want to alienate one or the other. Making a satire of the insane implications of Rapture theology was out of the question, but so was just making 90 minutes of Christian agitprop. So he watered down the themes instead. He was competent but lacked real talent. Same with the cheeze. He knew to remove the cheeze so as not to distract from the movie, but wihout the cheeze, you just have a cheap meat pattie between two slices of white bread. Kills hunger, but no ones going to want seconds.