Heres Nicolas Cage, sitting in the seat he sits in for most of this movie. Note the pleading look in his eyes.
  • Here's Nicolas Cage, sitting in the seat he sits in for most of this movie. Note the pleading look in his eyes.

Last night at 9:40, a friend and I watched the Left Behind film adaptation at the Regal Meridian. Though the movie opened two weeks ago, this was the last screening of Left Behind in Seattle city limits—it's still playing in Federal Way, Silverdale, and Everett—and we were the only people in the theater. Left Behind currently sits at two percent on Rotten Tomatoes, a number so insultingly small that a zero would somehow be preferable.

I normally don't hold much truck with Rotten Tomatoes, but in this case two percent is just about right. I've watched nearly every film in Nicolas Cage's late-stage oeuvre—the artless movies he's starred in just to dig himself out of crippling tax debt. This is the first time I ever felt sorry for Cage as I watched a film. He looks puffy and acts like he's not quite aware of where he is. He doesn't move from a chair for the vast majority of the movie. His line delivery would probably be more lively if he read the informational text from the side of a pill bottle. I wondered after the film if this is what it felt like to watch Elvis Presley perform in 1976, the sense that you're watching a magnificent wild animal laid low by civilization.

This iteration of Left Behind was clearly intended to be a crossover hit, an evangelical film that convinces mainstream audiences to investigate Christianity through the magic of entertainment. The God talk is actually pretty light. We meet airline pilot Captain Ray Steele (Cage) as he's taking his wedding ring off in an attempt to seduce a flight attendant. He's blowing off his own birthday party, which his daughter Hattie (Nicky Whelan) came home for. Seems that Hattie's mother, Irene (Lea Thompson, in a thankfully brief role), became a hardcore Christian last year, and now her husband and child can't stand all her ceaseless God talk. The joke's on them when the Rapture hits, sucking all devout Christians up to heaven and leaving piles of clothes in their wake.

Most of Left Behind consists of Ray trying to land a plane after his copilot and many of his passengers disappear in the Rapture, even as Hattie tries to figure out what happened on the ground. Ray is assisted by a world-famous and universally loved investigative journalist named Buck Williams (Chad Michael Murray, the second-best actor in the cast), who has just fallen hard for Hattie. You think you know where the story's going to end, but it doesn't end there. By the time the credits roll, the characters have only just realized that they're witnesses to the Rapture. Left Behind really only has enough story to cover the first act of a movie, stretched over an entire film's running time.

Look, this movie doesn't even deserve the number of words I've already committed to it. It's bad. It's boring. The score, by Jack Lenz, is an abomination featuring truly terrible soft-jazz saxophone and an easy listening flavor that doesn't match the apocalyptic proceedings. The special effects are garbage. It's painful to watch Cage barely turn his head to address his fellow actors. This movie has all the soul, artistic accomplishment, and spiritual depth of a Precious Moments figurine.