Pretty good if you stop watching at 01:40:00

Rating: 6/10 (27 June 2009)

There's little new I can tell you in this review, as my criticism is exactly the same as what has been repeated countless times. What I can tell you is how to watch this movie in a way that won't let itself ruin your experience.
It starts out really well, with a good build-up of suspense and some impressive disaster scenes. But at a certain point it suddenly gets completely ridiculous, as if the director got an aneurysm and his kids had to finish it. Because this movie is all about numbers, here are some of my own. That disastrous point is at 01:40:00 on the DVD if you're watching the NTSC version (at PAL frame-rate it should be about 01:35:54). Just hit the stop button and assume Cage crashes his car into a tree at lethal speed and the credits start rolling. That's a silly ending but believe me, perfectly acceptable compared to the real thing. The actual ending reeks of propaganda for a certain 'religion', although the director nor any of the main actors seem to have any connections to it, so it probably wasn't intentional. It may just have been a case of "hey, we've created an awesome build-up but we forgot to come up with a good finale, so let's summon a Deus Ex Machina and lots of CGI."
Well, now you're probably too curious to skip the ending anyway, so go ahead and let yourself be disappointed. Don't tell me I didn't warn you.