90 Minutes in Heaven (2015)

Why oh why did this have to be such a very dreary telling of Don Piper's story? I kept wanting to yell at the actors to a. Show some life and b. talk to each other! The people in the film just didn't seem normal, the actor playing Don Piper made him a totally unlikeable person, a whinger par excellence and his wife came across as someone who rarely spoke and was so buttoned up it was just plain unbelievable. I had read the book a few years previously and was looking forward to seeing it. However after watching the movie all I can say is it would have been far better to leave it at the book, this made me think Don had invented his heavenly trip to make some dollars to pay for his treatment. I feel bad saying such negative things as I'm sure the producer tried hard but he needed someone to tell him how unpleasant the main characters were coming across as and to edit edit edit.

It's 1989 Texas. Don Piper (Hayden Christensen) is a young Baptist preacher with wife Eva (Kate Bosworth) and three kids. His car is crushed by an on-coming truck. Paramedics can't find a pulse. A passing pastor climbs in to pray over him. He revives and is rescued. He is severely injured and suffers a tough recovery. The limited government compensation is taken by the health insurance. He suffers depression. He eventually reveals that during the ninety minutes of presumed death, he had reached heaven.This two hour movie has no reason to be more than ninety minutes whether in heaven or not. The plot has no drama. His depressed character is tiresome. There is nothing compelling. I hoped for some heavenly visions but they are short and lackluster. The spread of his story and his fans are infinitely more compelling than this movie.

My Rating is based on the "idea". If I was to give this movie a serious movie quality rating it would be something close to 2 or 3. There are better movies with second tier actors to be seem like "The carpenter's miracle". Even "Heaven is for real" is better than this. I understand that movies abut the same subject might look like church trying to entice some people to come closer to Christian religion. However, I think that each individual experience is different. Some people have been through tremendous pain and suffering not to mention they survived accidents or diseases when people usually don't make it. Internet will show you many more stories of the same nature but they have not yet made it to the big screen. A good one is "Flight to Heaven" about Captain Dale Black. The issue is always to be able to tell a story about real and simple people exactly how it happened. It is very personal but with the right direction and dedicated actors it can be a success.

This is not an action Movie, it's more than this, but you have to be willing to catch the message, which is powerful. This is about faith, love and friendship. Is he going to give up, the guy survived the unimaginable, nobody under any "normal" circumstances survives any thing like that, who helped him, 90 minutes gone, declared and confirmed dead by the police and the rescue team, but then one men, a pastor, insisted to pray for "the gone", please don't put this movie in a drawer, there is so much more than entertainment here and worth to think about, the men survived to leave us a testimony, greater than anything, watch carefully