Review of Left Behind (2014) by Rowan G — 21 Jun 2015

I see a lot of dismal reviews, having just watched the film with a friend I find I can't be quite as scathing or disappointed sounding as the others.

This film was picked originally as a background film. I was going to just browse the web and he was going to paint.

After about 30 minutes I realised neither of us was actually doing that. we'd both engaged with the film enough to set aside other pursuits.

The film on the whole is...reasonable. Nick Cage as the philandering Captain Steele (I laughed at the name) reacts competently to the problems, his emotional scenes are appropriately scaled breakdowns and he sets them aside to focus on the far more important job of landing his plane and saving his remaining passengers. Apparently those left out of heaven include a lot of extremely rational and sensible people.

Everyone for the most part acts either very rationally or very irrationally.

It's a surprisingly human film at times.

My favourite character was the muslim man who retains dignity and good humour and displays compassion in what must be to him an incredibly faith-shattering experience.

To me, he represented the best of humanity we see in the entire film and I respected the film for that choice.

The majority of the main characters felt human enough that their reactions were appropriate. their actual dialog was often cringeworthy, but when it wasn't, it was usually competently delivered even if it was a bit uninspiring.

Although the funniest bit has to be the aforementioned Muslim man (I don't think we ever learn his name) in a confrontation with Warrick Davis.

Davis: "you wanna know what I think??".

MM: *beat* "No".

The effects were fine. There wasn't much that needed special effects. though a few visual oddities like all the clothes left behind being apparently laid there neatly rather than collapsing empty did bug me.

I don't mind that the film paid some focus on the particular "sins" of those left behind, that's relevant, and it'd be the one thing every person in the film had in common to explore together. that's actually realistic.

It's like they started with these stereotype characters and some of them tried to be more than the stereotype, like the older businessman who opened his heart to the junkie partway through. I genuinely felt for him there.

All in all, the worst acting came from the main cast, not the secondary characters, though Warrick Davis could have probably done better than a "angry little guy" stereotype.

I was slightly bugged by how fast people went from normal day to apocalyptic riots though, no brief period of people going "what the heck?" and trying to get to grips with what happened, nope. a bunch of people vanish into thin air and everyone panics and violence and looting start immediately.

Because apparently that's what you do when people you love and hold dear vanish into thin air...

I have seen far worse films, I don't especially care to recommend this one to watch, but as a technical achievement, it's not a terrible film, it's not really a good film either. it's mediocre, maybe a C list film.

A fairly sedentary 2/5 rating. and I give it credit for attempting to portray something I'd not seen in fiction more than once or twice before.