The Rapture

Directorial debut for Tolkin, best known as the novelist who wrote The Player. Unfortunately, it is loony stuff, rising to a cherishable risibility in the final third. Sharon (Rogers) is a telephone operator who spends her nights partying with three-in-a-bed pick-ups until self-disgust turns her to God, after which disgustingness becomes the least of her problems. When her husband is randomly murdered, she takes her little daughter into the desert to await the Last Trumpets of Armageddon. A caring cop (Patton) turns up with food, but is unable to prevent an almost unwatchable tragedy. In jail, the prophecies of the Book of Revelations come to pass, the bars fall away, and she scoots off on the cop's motorbike pursued by the First Horseman of the Apocalypse, after which the shit gets plenty astral. Disquietingly, America seems to be leaping with these evangelistic Born Agains, but quite where Tolkin stands is obscured by shoddy plotting. Rogers puts her all into it.