9 out of 9 people found the following review helpful:
*** May contain spoilers ***

Knowing. Requires guessing, researching and filling in the gaps yourself
A Customer from Durham,
2nd April, 2009
It was incredibly hard to rate this film as it was only after doing some research afterwards that I was able to interpret it. The plot is, to its credit, tense and gripping. It starts quickly and it starts well. The inclusion of the scene in which Mr. Cage is giving a lecture on randomness vs determinism was masterful as every scene you see relates back to this original question and it brings an intelligent element to the film. Some of the scenes with the dark figures are genuinely terrifying and the imminent sense of darkness and doom does fill you with a certain tension. Disregarding some horrible cliches, strained emotion and the overstatement of some aspects, it was a good plot. Nicholas Cage will not be winning an Oscar for this film. Nor will any member of the cast. The quality of the acting is not one of the film's strongpoints The CGI scenes are amongst the best that I've ever seen. The plane wreckage was unapologetically brutal, the train crash heart-stoppingly graphic and the apocalypse scene suitably breathtaking. Those scenes must have cost a lot to make and they really stay with you. Money well spent, it would seem. The ending (HUGE SPOILER). I felt quite deflated and cheated that an up-to-then gripping plot was spoilt by an utterly ridiculous explanation. It was aliens? But, a small amount of research later, I discovered that they weren't aliens. They were, in fact, angels (chayot angels if we're being precise). Far from being random, the ending was logically necessary (from a Christian perspective, at least). Upon judgement day, some need to be saved and it is in God's chariot (Ezekiel's wheel aka the big spaceship) that this may happen. It's all just one big bible quote. Even if that is the correct interpretation, there are still glaring plot holes, which I'm sure you (have/will have) seen for yourself. So how to rate a film that was tense, gripping and occasionally terrifying but with big plot holes,poor acting and an ending that requires a knowledge of esoteric bible passages? Good?