90 Minutes in Heaven

Hayden Christensen trades his lightsaber for a hospital bed in this adaptation of Don Piper's mega-bestselling book. Say what you will about Christensen's range — he's effective here, spending most of the film immobilized and in pain, which plays to his strengths of conveying suffering silently. Kate Bosworth as his wife Eva is the film's real MVP, portraying a woman holding her family together while her husband is physically present but emotionally absent during his recovery. The film makes an interesting structural choice: the heaven sequence is brief — maybe five minutes — while the bulk of the runtime focuses on the grueling physical rehabilitation. It's actually a film about suffering, not heaven, which may disappoint readers of the book expecting more celestial imagery. Michael W. Smith has a small role and is perfectly fine. The car accident scene is disturbingly realistic. Where the film struggles is in pacing — hospital recovery, no matter how dramatic in real life, doesn't always translate to riveting cinema. But as an honest portrayal of how catastrophic injury can test a marriage and a faith, it has more depth than the title suggests.