The beginning middle and end all belong in different movies.

Rating: 5/10 (5 April 2009)

The beginning of this movie is quite good. It would make a great movie. This movie would be about a man finding out that life is predetermined and not just the result of random events. He and his father a pastor are reunited and we can look into how this knowledge would effect our outlook on like.
The middle of this movie would also make a decent movie. Even if it is one that has been made quite a few times. Man finds out about events that are going to happen in the future and tries to stop them with some level of success or failure. Lots of special effects and action if nothing else.
The end of this movie could also be part of a good or even great movie. The end of the world is near and aliens come to save some of the children. Man discovers this and tries to "save" the children from the aliens until he discovers that the aliens are the good guys.
The problem is that that these three different scenarios were all crammed into the same single movie.
In the end this movie is reduced to 3 important scenes: 1) aliens kidnap the children 2) land them on a new planet and 3) the earth is destroyed but mankind lives on.
On a aside this movie seemed to be anti-green. Nick Cage lives in a huge house and drives a huge truck. Even the aliens drive a gas guzzler. There is also a fatalistic feeling to the movie. As in "yes global warming might destroy mankind, but can we do anything to stop it, and maybe even aliens will come and save us". At least looking at the movie in this light gives it a motive to be so bad, but likely there were just too many cooks and the large cars where just what the car companies where flogging at the time, and the house was big so it would be scarier.