Jerusalem Countdown Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

Jerusalem Countdown Blu-ray Movie Review

Is this the end or only the beginning?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 12, 2012

There’s a famous dictum that politics and religion should never be discussed with family, let alone strangers. It’s a dictum we attempt to abide by, at least generally, here at Blu-ray.com, as we have a wide array of readers all over the world from a huge variety of backgrounds and belief systems. Our own personal beliefs of course instantly color our reactions to just about everything—including films—in ways we probably aren’t even consciously aware of a lot of the time. But when a film like Jerusalem Countdown comes along, it is virtually impossible not to talk about both politics and religion, and chances are someone somewhere reading this is going to disagree with either the film, my assessment of it, or some tangentially related subject. So let me start by giving just a little background about my personal religious history, which is somewhat more convoluted than many, just so readers of this review can know upfront about the personal experiences which inform my writing and perhaps even any unconscious biases I may bring to my assessment. I am the child of one Jewish parent and one Christian parent, and my early years were spent in an Episcopalian parochial school, though I was growing up in Salt Lake City, where I was immersed in the prevalent Mormon culture, something that only increased once I matriculated into the public school system. I honor both my Jewish and Christian roots, and in fact as many regular readers of my classical music and opera reviews know, I make part of my living as a musician, having worked steadily as Music Director for both large churches and synagogues in the Pacific Northwest. My Jewish background has granted me a working knowledge of Hebrew (my wife is fluent), giving me at least a bit of insight into the Torah (and/or Old Testament) and my post-graduate career included schooling in Classical Greek, with the sole purpose that I could read some of the New Testament in its original format. And so while eclectic (to say the least), I believe I have a solid grounding in the Judeo-Christian ethos that serves as a foundation for our Western Culture, and in fact I would argue (nicely, of course) that I have a perhaps better understanding than many about the interrelationships between the two religions and the long history that weaves the two belief systems together. With that prologue out of the way, let’s move on to Jerusalem Countdown and what various people may feel about the film, both pro and con.

There’s a subset of Christians who are convinced we are currently living in “The End Times”, a pre-Apocalyptic world of impending doom and disaster, chaos that is usually seen as erupting from the roiling conflicts that seem to be an eternal equation in the Middle East. John Hagee is an American Pastor of a Texas congregation called Cornerstone Church, a nondenominational aggregation that falls within what is often termed the Charismatic Movement, a sort of quasi- Pentecostal approach that believes in an active work by the Holy Spirit, which can invest believers and lead them to a new understanding of God and Jesus Christ. Hagee wrote a book entitled Jerusalem Countdown in 2006, which was an amalgamation of information that Hagee claimed pointed to a coming conflict wherein Russia and Iran would invade Israel, God would destroy the invaders, and the Antichrist (whom Hagee made synonymous with the European Union) would then involve various other world powers in the conflagration, ultimately leading to the Second Coming of Christ. That book, as unlikely as it may sound on face value, was then adapted and invested with various fictional elements for this film version produced by Arizona-based Christian film entity Pure Flix.

David A.R. White portrays FBI Agent Shane Daughtry, who in the film’s opening moments is contacted by a shadowy character named Rockwell (Lee Majors, looking a little scary and surprisingly close to that infamous mug shot of Nick Nolte from a few years ago). Rockwell insists he has important information that may affect the very future of the planet, and Daughtry, smart agent that he is, sets off to meet him. (In a kind of funny aside, Daughtry sets his cell phone down before Rockwell divulges where he is, but evidently due to superior tracking skills, Daughtry is still able to find him.) Rockwell starts babbling about something called Seven Wonders when all of a sudden a hit man named Nick Tanner (Matthew Tailford, also one of the film’s three writers) bursts in and kills him. Daughtry tracks and captures Tanner, who is repeating verses from the Book of Revelation like they’re some kind of magical mantra.

Playing out against this scenario are two others that will form the other two legs of this filmic trinity. The first involves Tanner’s boss, a rogue agent named Matthew Dean (Nick Jameson), who is plotting something nefarious with an unseen head honcho whose encrypted voice sounds like an even more sinister Darth Vader. The second involves a suburban Chicago couple, Daniel (Carey Scott) and Angie (contemporary Christian vocalist Jaci Velasquez, who strangely sings none of the tunes included in the film, though she did provide a song for the somewhat similarly themed Left Behind: World at War). Angie is a true believer, hoping to get her unbelieving husband to see the Light, though Daniel is too busy researching a dangerous peace agreement which would force Israel to cede a lot of its territory to be interested in her entreaties to actually crack open a Bible and read a verse or two.

Shane soon hooks up with another FBI Agent named Eve (Anna Zielinski), with whom he obviously has some shared history, though this is not explained very well in the film. The two agents have to figure out what exactly Seven Wonders is, how Tanner and Dean are involved and why Eve’s father, an older highly placed operative (played by Stacy Keach), insists that it all has to do with the End Times. In the meantime, the Daniel – Angie plot arc turns out to have a connection to the main storyline when Daniel figures out his neighbors are terrorists harboring nuclear bombs.

Jerusalem Countdown is an earnest and sincere thriller with political and religious overtones that will no doubt appeal to Christians who are already attuned to this sort of subject matter. The film is well crafted and does have several effective elements of suspense, but it also has a frankly less than riveting feel at other times, something exacerbated by some cut and paste screenwriting which telegraphs developments pretty obviously (anyone who doesn’t see the big clinch between Eve and Shane had better go back to Filmmaking 101 class, to give just one salient example). The film to its credit doesn’t posit any easy answers, and in fact after the main plot reaches its denouement, the “rest of the story” (as Paul Harvey might say) plays out with a quick Left Behind-esque coda that raises more questions than it answers.

Jerusalem Countdown is the sort of the film that will invite probably undue praise and unfair brickbats, depending on the background of the deliverer (no pun intended). Christians who see troubling signs in current day events and are convinced The Rapture may be coming sooner rather than later will no doubt respond quite favorably to this film’s blend of End Times prophecy and thriller elements. Less apocalyptically-minded Christians and those with other belief systems (including no belief system) will no doubt roll their eyes in exasperation that a film could be built around such ludicrous (in their eyes) elements. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. For this type of film, Jerusalem Countdown includes better than average performances, a fair degree of filmmaking craft, but some rote and cliché ridden writing. Christians of course are prone to forgiving sins, including filmic ones, and so any issues with Jerusalem Countdown will probably not be as much of a turnoff to them as they will no doubt be to those who aren’t expecting The End on anything other than the last frame of a film.

Jerusalem Countdown Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Jerusalem Countdown is presented on Blu-ray with an MPEG-2 encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Despite being encoded with the relatively ancient MPEG-2 codec, Jerusalem Countdown boasts a fairly sharp and well defined image. The film is filtered toward the blue side of things, as seems to be the consistent case with thrillers nowadays. This filtering tends to rob the film of fine detail in midrange shots, though close-ups still reveal some excellent fine detail. While contrast is generally quite good throughout this presentation, blacks are awfully milky at times (a late scene in a bar is an especially bad example), which hampers the overall look of the film. Some of the film bears a bit more softness than aficionados of recent vintage films are probably going to be used to, but overall this transfer is above average in clarity and sharpness and should please those without unrealistic expectations.

Jerusalem Countdown Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Like a lot of smaller labels new to the Blu-ray game, Pure Flix hasn't quite adopted the lossless audio protocol that high definition aficionados tend to demand, and so Jerusalem Countdown offers only a standard lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 surround mix. The good news is this DD 5.1 mix is really rather well done, with consistent and at times pretty bombastic surround activity with some nice, fulsome sounding LFE in several key sequences. Fidelity is excellent and dialogue is always cleanly and clearly presented. Yes, it would have been better had this film been released with a lossless audio option, but this Dolby Digital mix suffices fairly well, all things considered.

Note: There is one strange anomaly with regard to the optional subtitles on this release. They must have been encoded strangely, for whenever there isn't any dialogue, three little X's appear in the lower left hand side of the screen. I am wondering if perhaps these were an error in font choices and should in fact be the little "music note" glyph that sometimes appears on subtitles, for when the lyrics to the final credits songs come on, they're surrounded by the X's.

Jerusalem Countdown Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary features producers Russell Wolfe and Michael Scott, who present a fairly standard commentary here which includes data like what shots were done in Michigan and which in Los Angeles, as well as various anecdotal elements about the actors and John Hagee's original book which incpired the film.


• Behind the Scenes (HD; 22:49) has a lot of footage of scenes being shot, replete with direction being shouted at actors and extras as well as interviews with various cast and crew.


• Deleted Scenes (HD; 16:31) includes several scenes giving some extra character beats, especially to bad guy Matthew Dean and neighbor Daniel. The Dean scenes includes off camera voicing by who is presumably director Harold Cronk filling in for the main bad guy.

Jerusalem Countdown Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Jerusalem Countdown is obviously preaching to the choir, as it were, and that choir, made up of individuals and congregations who are already prone to believe in the film's central End Times thesis, will no doubt eat up this film, which features decent performances and above average film craft. Others will no doubt not be so enamored of a project that still bears a certain amateurish aspect and has a rote and cliché ridden screenplay. If you're a member of that first group, you will almost certainly enjoy Jerusalem Countdown, especially if you're a fan of other entertainments in this same general genre like the Left Behind series.