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Left Behind | 2014 | PG-13 | - 2.6.2
An airline pilot (Nicolas Cage) experiences instances of turbulence, customer panic and the disappearance of passengers from their seats on a long-haul flight. Returning to his home base, he finds that many other people have vanished, including his wife (Lea Thompson) their young son along with other Christians. Also with Cassi Thomson, Chad Michael Murray, Nicky Whelan, Martin Klebba and Jordin Sparks. Directed by Vic Armstrong. [1:50]
SEX/NUDITY 2 - A woman watches her airline pilot father walking with a flight attendant that is smiling and staring at him; she stares at him as she looks up and down the length of his body.
► A man kisses a woman on the cheek. A woman becomes friends with a man and it is implied that they begin a romantic relationship when they hug for several seconds in a later scene.
► A woman asks her father where his wedding ring is and he says that he does not wear it when he is flying, but that he and his wife are not getting a divorce. A husband says that his wife talks about God too much and remarks, "If she's gonna run off with another man, why not Jesus?" A married man ends a relationship that he is having with another woman and the second woman tells a friend that she and the pilot never had sex.
► Throughout the film a college-aged woman wears a long-sleeved shirt open at the neck and exposing some cleavage. A flight attendant wears a long-sleeved shirt that gaps a bit at the openings between buttons (we see no flesh or undergarments). A few women in an airport terminal wear short shorts. One woman on a plane wears a tight sweater that accentuates her ample bosom.
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VIOLENCE/GORE 6 - A woman agrees to take her little brother to the mall where a loud jolt shakes the ground and people scream; the woman is left hugging her little brother's empty clothing and panics, gasping and running as other people all around her cry and run, looking for lost loved ones; we see that all the children and many adults have vanished, leaving their clothing, jewelry and any possessions they carried while men begin looting the clothing for money and the stores for TVs; a driverless car crashes loudly through large windows and into the food court, stopping amid a pile of broken glass and we see a woman's arm hanging out the passenger window; in the parking lot, a single engine plane without a pilot crashes onto the pavement and slides into a car; no one appears hurt, but we hear a loud BOOM and see flames engulfing the plane.
► The co-pilot and one flight attendant vanish from a plane; another plane has no one in the cockpit and heads directly for the first plane, sheering off part of the second plane's wing and spoiler and causing fuel to leak under the wing and burn off in flames for several seconds, frightening passengers while the other plane, on fire, falls below dark clouds and we see no more of it; the pilot on the first plane lowers oxygen masks for everyone to use until the cabin re-pressurizes before telling them to stay buckled and to follow emergency procedures for a hard landing.
► Two men accost a woman and they all struggle over her purse while a man is blown through a loudly shattering glass door by a shotgun blast and falling on his back to the sidewalk, dead and with blood on his jacket; a man walks out and points the shotgun at a woman who raises her hands over her head and then walks away; along another street, people sit, crying and holding possessions left by vanished loved ones while two women cry over empty baby buggies and one woman cries over an empty baby romper in her hands. A motorcyclist grabs a purse from a walking woman's shoulder and a completely empty school bus rolls off a bridge overhead into a creek a few yards away (no one is hurt). A traffic jam blocks a street outside a mall and we see that many of the cars are completely empty; a woman driver cries, a man leans out of his pickup truck and shouts for everyone to move their cars out of his way and two EMT vehicles cross in the background with sirens sounding. A woman uses a metal sign stand to shatter the glass of a side door entrance to a hospital and she crawls through the glass on the floor gingerly (no blood); she finds the nursery completely empty of babies and a nurse's uniform crumpled on the floor as a woman with swollen red eyes yanks open a curtain and walks out to the first woman, stating that the babies and nurses all vanished.
► On an airliner, a woman pulls a handgun, points it at people, cries and screams several times that her ex-husband paid everyone to take her missing daughter, that someone put something in her drink to knock her out so the girl could be taken off the plane; other people scream and hide behind seats and the woman points the gun at her own chest but does not pull the trigger, as a reporter takes the gun and a man says that his sick mother died when he was a child and that he arrived home and found her dead, leaving him as upset as the gun-toting woman is now. A sad woman climbs to the top of a bridge at dusk, talks to her vanished mother and leans forward to jump to her death but stops when her cell phone rings and a male friend is on the line; she speaks with him and her father, whom she thought was dead, and climbs down to safety.
► A woman uses a truck, a pavement-rolling machine and a pickup truck to clear a makeshift runway and pours a can of gasoline at the end of the road lighting it up as a beacon for an airplane to land; the plane shakes and jolts as it glides down and lands hard, with massive sparks, screeching and red-hot wheels before stopping a few feet from a fuel tank truck, while a chemical station halfway back down the road ignites in large flames; a flight attendant puts out an inflated rubber exit ramp and helps people slide to the ground while a man kicks a person down the ramp when the person hesitates (no one is injured).
► Two people argue several times about how many gods there are; one person rifles the other man's flight bag, the man grabs it back, takes a toothbrush and points it shouting that he has no weapons. A man talks about Area 51 attracting aliens who have made the vanished passengers invisible or put them in a wormhole and another man says that's crazy. A woman argues with another woman who was berating a reporter in an airport terminal about Bible prophecy coming true. A woman's mother warns her that earthquakes are fulfilling Biblical prophecy; the daughter is cynical about God and stomps out of the house. A wooden sign on a street reads, "The end is HERE." In a church a woman finds the pastor left behind alone and she argues with him about God; he says that the vanished people went to Heaven for protection against seven years of evil and she screams at him and stomps out. A man and a woman argue about the existence of God and the man says he can no longer think of having a relationship with the woman; she becomes angry and stalks away.
► A hospital is overrun with new patients; we see no blood except a scratch on a man's forehead, but many people lie on gurneys and one man is holding his arm and grimacing.
► A woman walks home and finds it empty; she picks up a ball bat and looks around, screaming as the phone rings and she hears a recorded message when she answers it; the woman's mother and little brother have vanished and when she checks voicemail on her mother's phone she hears her pilot dad sending a Mayday signal, followed by some muffled crashing noises (she gasps, thinking he is dead) and she finds the shower running in the bathroom with her mother's jewelry lying under the spray. A man rifles through a vanished flight attendant's bag, tossing things to the floor until he breaks down crying when he sees a watch engraved with "John 3:16" and the words "Bible Study!!!" on a calendar page. All children and 1/3 of adults on a commercial airliner disappear, leaving their clothing folded in their seats and jewelry lying on top of their garments; some remaining passengers cry, others argue about what is happening and a man becomes angry whenever anyone looks at him, asking if they want to insult his size while a pilot instructs the passengers to remain seated and speaks loudly to an unruly man; several other men stand and pound on the cockpit door, but seat themselves after the pilot berates them to sit down and buckle up.
► A man sobs when he speaks with his daughter by phone and hears that his wife and young son have vanished; an air traffic controller tells him that millions have vanished worldwide and then the radio spews static and goes dead. A man says, "It looks like the end of the world" and a woman replies, "No not yet. I'm afraid it's only beginning."
LANGUAGE 2 - 2 mild obscenities, exclamations (shut-up), name-calling (crazy, insane, nutty, wacko), stereotypical references to pilots, flight attendants, reporters, wives, mothers, fathers, single parents, teenagers, the elderly, Christians, Muslims, skeptics, conspiracy theorists, US Southerners, African Americans, little people, drug addicts, 6 religious exclamations (Oh God, Thank God, Thank You God, Jeez Louise, God Knows What, Holy Cow).
SUBSTANCE USE - A woman on a plane shakes and shivers in her seat and runs to the bathroom where she looks into the mirror and says, "It's a bad trip. You've had them before" (referring to drug use), and a reporter sees injection track marks on a woman's arm. A bottle of wine is shown in a corner of a kitchen counter in a house, a flight attendant carries a bottle of champagne to the service area in the front of a plane, and an airline passenger calls for a Scotch that we never see.
DISCUSSION TOPICS - World religions, heaven, the Biblical Rapture, global disasters, air travel, family relationships, fidelity, trust, values, making choices, courage, leadership, sorrow, regret, making amends, dwarfism, senility.
MESSAGE - We all make mistakes, but during a crisis we want the love of our families.
CAVEATS
Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.
We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.
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