90 minutes au paradis

I must admit the first time I watched this movie, I did really like it but I watched it again tonight, after 2 years, and I have to say that, this time, I appreciated it very much, It touched me deeply.

I have seen suffering like this and have been in the wife's shoes and this is very real. You have to understand the pastor's experience in heaven made his recovery more difficult (that might be a spoiler). His suffering was hard to watch but it was realistic. The spiritual struggle, financial trouble, and family trauma is just how it is. A near death experience, even without seeing heaven, makes you wish you had gone all the way, just to escape the suffering here and the suffering of dying again. It is honest and if you want to be prepared for tragedy here and heaven afterwards, it is worth the slow torture of watching this. It is better than doing yourself. The legal problems were also so true to life. Watch and learn and you might not have to live it. The last half hour is worth and since I see honesty throughout this film, I believe that is also likely the truth.

Don't be fooled by the title. There was nothing heavenly about this film. It's a corny, hokey, clichéd, dull, slow, and an inaccurate melodrama about a young minister, Don Piper (Hayden Christensen) who suffered traumatic injury in a car accident. The paramedics who arrive at the scene cannot find a pulse and leave him unattended awaiting a coroner.

Another minister caught in the resulting traffic jam enters the car and starts praying and singing, at which point he returns to life by joining in the hymn. He has been "dead" for 90 minutes. Now, it has happened that people who are being worked on with a defibrillator, etc., have come back after 90 minutes. But this guy was in a car with plastic over him.

Kate Bosworth plays the minister's wife, Eva, as if she had been heavily sedated. On the other hand, the minister is transferred to a hospital that allows him unlimited access to morphine so he is, in fact, heavily sedated. And about halfway through this 121 minutes of hell, you'll wish you were, too.

Unfortunately, Christensen's character is unlikeable as he slides into self-pity. When fireworks are going on outside, he says in his narration, those are the only fireworks left in our marriage now. He's been flat on his back in intractable pain -- I don't know what he expected.

The character is on an IV for 45 days+. He would have had a PIC line by then. Also, he's given no pain medication while they're trying to stimulate bone growth with a fixator, which is incredibly painful.

One other thing - of course the recovery is very expensive so at one point he is moved to a less expensive hospital. And all the staff becomes black. Low, producers, LOW.

The acting is uniformly bad with the exception of Fred Thompson, who comes off like John Barrymore compared to the rest of them. He offers him a milkshake - McDonald's obviously threw some money at this thing. They're everywhere.

As far as learning anything about the character's NDE, you won't, except for the last minutes of the film. Maybe heaven is worth the wait, but getting to this part of the film is not since you had to go through hell to get there. It's too little, too late.

I don't believe in god, but do like to watch religious inspiring movies. Never normally disappointed until now.

90 minutes in Heaven. I am 17 minutes before the end, all I have wached is a poor guy, griping anway in his hospital bed, nothing about the possibility of heaven, nothing to giv me hope.

Then he attempts to get out of bed, has one crutch, his left leg has metal rods through it, his right leg he can barely hobble, whicch armpit supports his crutch? You would think his left, the side with the implants and the gammy leg,. No, he uses the crutch under his right armpit, the leg he can support weight.

He falls over. Suprise!

This is not an action Movie, it's more than this, but you have to be willing to catch the message, which is powerful. This is about faith, love and friendship. Is he going to give up, the guy survived the unimaginable, nobody under any "normal" circumstances survives any thing like that, who helped him, 90 minutes gone, declared and confirmed dead by the police and the rescue team, but then one men, a pastor, insisted to pray for "the gone", please don't put this movie in a drawer, there is so much more than entertainment here and worth to think about, the men survived to leave us a testimony, greater than anything, watch carefully