arouet

Critics these days seem to give good reviews if only part of a movie is entertaining instead of the whole picture. This seems to be the case with this. This picture is rewarded for half-working and it reveals the terrible state of movie-making today. The first 45 minutes are entertaining but then we are insulted with the most ludicrous and unbelieveable plot twists you can think of. It is time for people to say that is simply not good enough.

This movie insults you with the most banal wrap-up in memory- cliches are thrown at you at a dizzy pace because the writers are just too lazy or don't care enough to think of something more plausible. At the end of the picture, you are not even sure what planet this caper takes place on. It is certainly not Earth. Sorry, someone needs to tell the writers you cannot control traffic or subways from a computer hacker. You would think the writers had never even been to Los Angeles by the way they portray it.

This had potential, but it was washed away by an impossible ending that destroys the entire picture.

This movie has a good look and good dialogue, but the plot sinks it. It just never goes anywhere and there is not one surprise in the entire movie. Certainly, it tries to be intelligent with references to Kant and political ideas, but that is not enough to save it from mediocrity.

It is advertised as a tense thriller, yet there is nothing thrilling about it at all. If anything, it is a botched romantic drama. It unexpectedly falls apart in the last 15 minutes with strange behavior by the lead that is hard to explain, much less fathom. If you are looking for any sort of twist, don't waste your time- it never comes. Everything here is precisely as it seems.

I'm amazed Malkovitch is involved in this. Perhaps on paper, it works better than on screen. At any rate, it's the plot drags it down. Malkovtich needs to look for a better screenwriter.

This movie fails on a number of levels. As it can be viewed on strictly religious terms or as an action thriller, I will address both.

First, let's just talk about it terms of an thriller film. It fails in this regard because it simply makes no sense. People don't act in any sort of real manner. It's simply not how people would act if this were a real situation of millions of people vanishing. You would think the Bible is some book that was only known to the people who vanished and no one else. Everyone else seems to be completely in the dark and don't even make the connection this might be the "Rapture," yet, millions of Christians vanish overnight as Christians have been saying they will. I don't know about you, but if that happens in real life, me and most of the planet would be rushing to Church the next morning. It seems implausible no one would. Also, everyone goes about their business as if some mugging happened in the neighborhood. The most ridiculous thing is that most people accept the disappearance as some sort of nuclear radiation when that is the most insane excuse that could be even offered. This film is incredibly outdated, a complete fabrication of how and what the U.N. is and how it works. Acting and dialogue are unintentionally hilarious, setting off streams and fits of laughter. In one Church scene, there is a bulletin board and six pictures of people on it with the caption, "OUR MISSING" A Church and there is only six missing people? How funny is that? What was it, The Church of Satan? There's no surprises and no tension, especially among the people who are not saved and whom you know will be calling out for Jesus by the end of the picture. There's a lot of talk about the "Wailing Wall," yet what is supposed to be the wailing wall, I guess, looks nothing like the real "wailing wall," as if producers have no clue about the "wailing wall" or don't think it's important enough to make a reasonable close simulation of it. The whole movie treats it's audience as simple-minded, uneducated couch potatoes.

Seeing this as a religious film, it is incredibly insulting. This lies the main offense. It's not powerful enough to convert anyone and not realistic enough to make anyone want to know more. It's most heinous crime, though, is how it uses the Jews. If the Jews made a big-budget multi-million dollar film and a huge media campaign about how the Pope came to his senses and announces to the world how he has come to the conclusion that Jesus Christ was not GOD after all and everyone should know that and see the truth, there would be an UPROAR in the Christian community. But they seem to have no problem committing that perfidious insult onto the Jews. Rabbi Ben Judah, the most learned and respected scholar in the world, announces to the planet that Jesus Christ is indeed God and he has been wrong and now knows the truth. This is terrible, terrible injustice to the Jewish faith. Besides the fact that it is simply ludicrous to think that a Rabbi could sit on a podium in Israel and the entire world of different religions is going to sit back and take his word for it just because he thinks so and these other religions be converted (What planet is this film on? Certainly not Earth), but to put words like that in the mouth of the head of another religion and have them say how wrong they were, well, it's just hateful and disrespectful, that's all. It's also disturbing that the whole conspiracy of trying to take over the world comes from INTERNATIONAL BANKERS, which has always been another word for Jews when it is in this context. It's just another example of the total disregard for the integrity of the Jews. It feigns respect for them while denigrating their beliefs. Coupled with a preposterous plot and representation, this film fails as both an action thriller and as a religious film.