Left Behind: The Movie (2000)

the audience applauded

A Masterpiece!

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Blistering performances.

"Left Behind" was a popular series of books that I actually managed to read in comic book form at first at least. Yeah, they certainly don't hold up looking back. Having seen the awful Nicolas Cage version, this is much better, but it's still a bad movie. That is how below the bar things have been set for my entertainment. I was actually giving credit to Kirk Cameron for making a better movie. Then that same year, he made "Saving Christmas" which was ranked as the worst movie of all time on the IMDb. Hey, at least he isn't as bad here. The first ten minutes of this story seem pointless and feature horrible CGI.It's weird, because it looks like the sequels are actually minor improvements. I recall watching Cameron on "Growing Pains" where he actually seemed decent. He seems to be getting worse all the time. I guess there wasn't anything that offensive in this movie. It's just quite stupid. The movie ends with the villain shooting two people and then brainwashing everyone into thinking they did it to themselves. Shouldn't there be security cameras or something around? Why was Buck (Kirk Cameron) unaffected? We see a scene where a priest actually prerecords a message saying that he knew this would all happen. Yeah, I guess he just didn't want to warn anyone about it. I've heard of religious people who mock this series too. Yes, I am religious (Christian) and this is a poorly done film so stick with the classic Jesus movies. *1/2

There is a worldwide food crisis. GNN TV reporter Buck Williams (Kirk Cameron) interviews scientist Chaim Rosenzweig in Israel about a surprising Eden-like harvest. Without warning, the country is attacked by an overwhelming enemy air force. The planes are destroyed by an invisible force. Rayford Steele leaves his family behind in Chicago to fly a plane from New York City to London on short notice. He's having an affair with flight attendant Hattie Durham. Back in NYC, Buck is contacted by his source Dirk Burton who warns him about a coming global currency, a crisis and a conspiracy by humanitarians Stonagal and Cothran. Buck takes the flight where people starts disappearing leaving behind their clothing.This starts off badly with some pretty awful CGI. Not only does it look cheap. It looks really silly. Other problems continue throughout the movie. The writing, the acting and everything else are all pretty bad. People act in unrealistic ways. It is so unnatural that it becomes incredibly awkward. Obviously there is a apocalyptic conspiracy that is central to some believers. I try not to judge it unless it's done poorly. This is done very poorly with very simplistic unreal world politics. This is a movie that relies on the words faith-based. One must have faith to believe in the logic of this movie. There is more unreality here than the most ridiculous zombie TV show.

I've been a Christian for nearly fifty years, and as I do not happen to believe in the pre-tribulation Rapture, approaching this movie as a work of fiction seemed wise. And as it turned out, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.As storytelling goes, it isn't half bad, and the acting is serviceable and even touches the heart or chills the bones at times. By now even those who have never seen it (and wouldn't if you paid them) probably know the basic plot: the Rapture, which is basically the sudden disappearance from the face of the earth of everyone who was "right with God" (meaning of course the sort of Christian who reads the Bible as if it were a "Dick and Jane" reading primer), leaving behind friends and loved ones to muddle about in confusion until they figure it out for themselves.The principle players are reporter Buck Williams (Kirk Cameron), airline pilot Rayford Steele (Brad Johnson), Steele's daughter Chloe (Janaya Stephens), and the Reverend Bruce Barnes (Clarence Gilyard), the obligatory minister who finds himself "left behind" and thus forced to face up to his inadequacies as a man of God.There's nothing inspired in the casting; the characters are stock and the actors inhabit them surprisingly well, Johnson especially (his grief when he comes home and discovers that his wife and son are among those taken is one of the more genuine moments in the whole picture).Since this is taken from the novel by Tim LaHaye, a proponent of the pre-tribulation Rapture, we all know what comes next: the tribulation and the rise of the Antichrist. It's all muddled up with a man in Israel attempting to combat world hunger and the move towards a single world currency (which is never explained; Christians who follow this theology have this particular theory about money but how it ties in to the return of Christ they can never really satisfactorily say). In addition, the nations of the world are declaring peace, which is a good thing, right? Not on your life. It takes a while to find it out but what this world peace really means is that there is no God so no need for any of the religions of the world.The United Nations takes a real beating in this movie; it is painfully obvious that the people who wrote this thing suffer from a xenophobia so deeply ingrained that anyone who does not look, speak, walk, or think as they do is at the very least suspicious and probably headed for the lake of fire.As for the Antichrist, this is where the movie slips, and slips badly. He arrives in the form of Nicolae Carpathia (Gordon Currie), a rather blank-faced man with a pronounced Russian accent. (Well of COURSE it would be Russian; remember those damn Commies??) The scenes in which Currie appears are the silliest ones in the film and frankly he comes across as comic relief most of the time.The film doesn't really end; the credits just roll. Two more films followed this one and they're all fun to watch if you do not take them too seriously.Haven't seen the remake yet (Good God, Nicolas Cage must have been desperate for money), but I'll review it when I do.

With the popularity of the Jenkins and LaHaye series, it was only a matter of time before they made a film series based on it. And "Left Behind" is just as narrow-minded as the series is.And what does "Left Behind" teach us? It teaches us that "a loving god" (or Jenkins' LaHaye's interpretation of God) selects only a handful of people who profess allegiance to one specific denomination of one specific religion to join him in paradise. Not only that, but at a specific point in time, he magically whisks them all away no matter what they're doing, also causing a number of accidents which undoubtedly whisk all of the "unsaved" people killed in said accidents straight to Hell. Warms the heart to a boil, doesn't it? Oh, but we're not finished yet. There's this guy named Nicolae Carpathia who begins his own rise to power against said "god." We're not supposed to know that he's the Antichrist yet, but come on... they may well have tattooed "666" on his forehead. The only thing that can stop him? Kirk "Crocoduck" Cameron.But the worst is yet to come. Not only is "Left Behind" a dark orgy of religious fanaticism, but it's outright plagiarism. Yes, that's right... it's plagiarism, and I'm not referring to the Bible. "Left Behind" plagiarizes Stephen King's "The Langoliers" so blatantly at the beginning that I'm surprised nobody else ever caught this. People disappearing suddenly on a plane, leaving behind clothes, belongings, surgical implants, etc.? You can't tell me that Jenkins and LaHaye just coincidentally thought of the very same thing. King should have sued them. So much for originality, huh guys?My critique is not against Christianity, nor against any religion in general. What it is against is a movie which uses fear and on screen violence to frighten people into converting to an extremely narrow-minded point of view, and isn't even done well in the first place. If you're someone who believes that every single word of the Bible - a book that has been translated and mistranslated throughout centuries and is filled with countless contradictions - to somehow still be 110% accurate, then this is probably the movie for you. If, on the other hand, you want an entertaining storyline about the rise of the Antichrist (and one that doesn't paint God as a genocidal monster), watch the "Omen" series instead. Don't give Jenkins or LaHaye the credit and money they don't deserve.