Left Behind, the Movie: Part 2

Fred Clark's divisions of the movie don't match the ones I was able to find, but we can start toward the end of the first segment. His version began by repeating the eerie scene with the prophet warning that this is not the end, but only the beginning. We then switch to Chicago, focusing in on the Steel's house. Rayford Steele (the dad) is putting on his pilot's uniform and packing to go to work. Chloe (the daughter) is packing her bags and heading to school. Incidentally, in the novel, Chloe is a student at Stanford. It is not clear in the movie whether she is in high school or college, but either way, she still lives with her parents. They come downstairs where Irene, the mom and born again Christian is decorating the house for Raymie's birthday and Raymie, the little brother, is watching Buck Williams on TV reporting on the attack.

Chloe is interested, but Mom makes Raymie turn the volume down just as Buck is saying that the Israeli army denies any role on the destruction of the force but inside sources reveal --. According to Fred Clark, he says Israel has a secret "laser weapon." I have never been able to hear that; it is always drowned out by Chloe and Raymie fighting over the remote. Here let me take the opportunity to register my agreement with Fred. In the book, the destruction of Russia's entire nuclear arsenal takes place about 18 months before the Rapture and no one but Buck seems to notice that it was a miracle. How believable is that?* Sure, you can say, maybe none of the characters other than Buck follow the news much. Well, I've known people who don't follow the news. I've worked with them. And I find they make an exception when something big happens. Like, say, Russia's entire nuclear arsenal blowing up without killing anyone. Besides, even if not one character (other than Buck) paid any attention to the news, Irene's preacher would surely have pointed this out as evidence of the world coming to an end, and Irene would have repeated it to her family. The makes it more believable in two ways. (1) The failed attack takes place right before the Rapture and Irene and the others are too distracted by preparing for Raymie's birthday to notice. (2) If Buck does, in fact, say that "inside sources" say Israel has a hidden super-weapon, that could give a non-miraculous explanation.

After a little typical family stuff, Rayford announces that his flight from New York to London has been moved up, so he will be missing Raymie's birthday party. He tries to console Raymie by offering to bring back a knight's helmet. Raymie wants a sword or a pike they put heads on. "Where does he come up with this stuff?" Rayford asks. "Sunday school," Raymie says. Rayford gives Irene a funny look, and she just shrugs.

This is done for laughs, but there is a serious (and rather disturbing) point here. It is, after all, perfectly normal for a boy that age to be interested in that sort of thing. And there is plenty of it in the Bible. But it is not the sort of thing any right-thinking parent wants to encourage. That is why Sunday schools usually downplay the bloodthirsty aspects of the Bible and focus on the more morally uplifting parts, or at least on harmless stories. But Irene's church is all about predicting more and ever more bloodshed on a Biblical scale. If that does, in fact, filter down into Sunday school and encourage boys in the sort of bloodthirsty interests every parent wants to discourage, maybe it tells us something about her church. Of course, the movie doesn't address that.

Anyhow, Irene says he knew the party was today. Rayford says he can't control the airline schedule. Irene says he could have said no. Clearly this has been a source of conflict between them for some time. Rayford has been neglecting his duties to his family in favor of work and Irene resents it. Bruce, the assistant pastor from Irene's church comes in with his son. He is played, incidentally, by Clarence Gilyard, who is black, although (Fred Clark assures us) PMD Christianity is almost entirely white. Rayford quickly ducks out the door. Irene gives his a goodby kiss to show she still loves him even if she gets angry with him.

Outside, Chloe confronts her father, and we find out that he is being less than honest with his wife and son. He knows that Irene's church people will be over for the birthday party and he just can't stand to be with them, so he buries himself in his work to avoid them. He points out that Chloe is doing the same with school. Chloe says they aren't her favorite people either, but at least she listens. Sometimes she even pretends to take an interest. He doesn't want to deal with it.

Meanwhile, in New York, Buck returns from Israel a conquering hero. He gets a call on his cell from his friend, Dirk Burton, saying he knows who is behind the planes falling out of the sky, but can't talk about it on an open line, meet him at the "usual spot." So Buck goes to meet Dirk Burton in some sort of empty building.** Burton gives the impression of being a complete paranoid lunatic. Barely able to fit two coherent sentences together, he rants on about the planes falling out of the sky, the grant money behind Rosensweig's formula, tracts of land, and merging all the world's currencies into one. And who's behind it all? The bankers Cothran and Stonagal. Buck is clearly unconvinced. His lack of conviction becomes stronger when Burton pulls out the paper he says shows it all and it turns out to be an old college essay. Burton also shows a lithium battery-sized disk in his watch that he says contains all the secrets he downloaded off Stonagal's computer, but he can't risk letting Buck be caught with it. Buck tells him to go get some sleep, but promises to publish if Burton comes up with real evidence.

Fred Clark says he can't tell whether Buck agreed to the meeting because he thought it was a legitimate story, or because he was worried that his friend had gone off his meds. My guess is Buck wasn't so sure himself and went down to find out. Upon meeting Burton, he decided that his friend had gone off his meds. What he didn't notice was the creepy looking fellow watching them.

Here is Fred Clark's review by way of comparison.

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*One again, I believe the authors think it is entirely believable because Saddam Hussein rained missiles on Israel during the Gulf War just a few years before they wrote the book and caused minimal damage, but no one saw that as a miracle.
**At this point, the segment I have cuts out and I have to go to part 2.