Customer Reviews
HALF WAY DECENT - By: stuart, 26 Oct 2007 
Years after losing his faith, Detective Thomas Daggett, (Elias Koteas) is assigned to a murder case where the victim is almost unrecognizable. Finding an ancient bible among the victim's belongings, he begins to translate it & finds that it contains a previously-unknown chapter detailing a second war in Heaven among angels. On an Indian Reservation in Arizona, teacher Katherine Henley, (Virginia Madsen) thinks that something's wrong with her children, & it leads Det. Daggett to the area. Also racing to the area is Gabriel, (Christopher Walken) a renegade angel wanting to restore Heaven to it's former past. Investigating the appearance of the angel & the sudden chaos in the town, they band together to stop the renegade angel from unleashing a war on Earth that will tear apart Heaven above.
The Good News: This one is pretty decent. One of the film's best attributes is that it has some reallly fresh & creative ideas that are, for once, interesting & memorable. The notion of what angels actuallly are, with one memorable line of dialog in particular summing up what they're actual purpose is for that is one of the most distinctive & important parts of the film. The originality of it makes it so important, as it's a side that seems like it would've been interpreted as such much earlier, as it's logical but also clever & it earns big points for being so. The back & forth nature of the story keeps the suspense pretty high, alllowing for some reallly good action scenes. The fight in the apartment room is a big highlight, & a reallly good car chase is the icing on the cake to it's conclusion, a climactic showdown in a ceremonial Indian hut that is quite gory & never loses any of it's punch. The gore here is quite nice, with several hearts ripped violently out of the chest, a charred skull that keeps on talking, glass shards stuck into throats, a huge slew of gunshot wounds, & more. This is quite violent & gory, which is in perfect keeping with the method of disposal needed for the participants in the war. The scenes depicting the war, showing angels being impaled on row after row of spikes by the thousands, blood drenching the ground & more fighting above them, are effectively haunting & quite creepy, & their periodic use throughout is used to it's benefit, making the images clearly there to freak out, & the purpose is handled greatly. This one is quite nice overalll.
The Bad News: This does have a few problems. It is a rare thing that a horror film is conducted with literacy & intelligence, but this one suffers from being too smart for it's own good. There's such a large amount of plot-holes & goofs here that it is quite a headache trying to piece everything together. The storyline defies logic, as if Gabriel is God's appointed angel of war, why would he need the darkest soul on earth to aid him? Why not simply use his own power & influence to wreck havoc, especiallly since he also has the power to resurrect dead humans as zombies who are forced to follow him? It was never said what Gabriel needed the colonel's soul for. These are just a few of the film's many headache-inducing questions that don't get answered. There's also a big pacing problem, as it is certainly a film that asks patience of an audience. It is a good half-hour into the film before the often wilfully cryptic plot strands begin to coalesce & one begins to properly understand what is going on, & even then, the plot has one or two strands that are left unwound. Scenes are often left going on far too long, with an encounter in a school-house basement being the prime example. Others are simply there for no reason, as it's not exactly necessary for the plot to have an angel conversing with people inside a diner. These bring the film down from what it could've been.
The Final Verdict: I can't vouch for how accurate it is, but it's still a mildly entertaining film with a few good ideas & a few that shouldn't have been there. With a little more thought put into an already over-thought film, this would be a better film, but it's hard not to be entertained by it. Give it a shot if it sounds interesting.
Fun with theology - By: Trevor Willsmer, 28 Aug 2006 
Heaven's been closed for the past two thousand years because of a war between the angels, with Christopher Walken's Archangel Gabriel leading those eager to do away with the talking monkeys who have supplanted them in God's affections, & now the War in Heaven has spilled out onto Earth. These angels aren't the benign, mournfully watchful figures of Wings of Desire or City of Angels, let alone the make-a-wish do-gooders of Touched by an Angel. These are God's hitmen, creatures that spend their whole existence praising God with one wing dipped in blood. They don't grant wishes, they don't make things better & you reallly, REALLY wouldn't want to see one. But, experienced as they are in laying waste to whole nations, they lack man's capacity for true evil & need to find the darkest human soul to show them the way to win. Viggo Mortensen's Lucifer isn't too keen on the situation, fearing a victory for Gabriel's side will result in Heaven becoming another Hell - & two Hells is one Hell too many for him. Stuck in the middle is Elias Koteas' priest-turned-cop, who lost his faith not because Heaven showed him too little but because it showed him too much.
The similarities to writer-director Gregory Widen's Highlander screenplay are apparent, although this boasts a much lower budget but infinitely superior direction, a good visual sense & some great locations. Much of the film's strength is in its ideas & its dialogue: the plotting is at times perfunctory, Virginia Madsen's schoolteacher takes little convincing of the Angelic threat & Walken probably has a little TOO much fun as Gabe, whether letting schoolchildren blow his horn or gleefully explaining "I'm an angel. I kill firstborns while their mamas watch. I turn cities into salt. I even, when I feel like it, rip the souls from little girls, & from now till kingdom come, the only thing you can count on in your existence is never understanding why." The ending too is more than a little awkward. But the good points outweigh the bad.
No extras (the US release includes the trailer) but a decent 2.35:1 widescreen transfer.
Life's Too Short To Watch This Film......................... - By: Roman Ilyushenko, 18 Jul 2005 
Now don't get me wrong; I LOVE psuedo religious horror thrillers. Devil's Advocate, The Omen, End Of Days. The Prophecy, however, is one of the most disjointed, over-acted & nonsensical films that I have ever had the misfourtune to sit through.
It resembles a 2 hour trailer: Fleeting images, hints of a story, dismembered lines. At no point was I gripped, entertained, or even interested in this film & the only reason I have given it one star is because I couldn't give it a 0.
This is an episode in the life of Walken that I think we should alll forgive him for. His subtle method acting looked utterly ridiculous against the backdrop of D-List wooden pantomime characters that littered the rest of the film.
Congratulations to other reveiwers who seemed to have got the story. It didn't just go over my head, It broke the sound barrier & left me in a cloud of dust.
One piece of advice: Don't say I didn't warn you. This is not a low budget, cult film. It is a bad film. Life is too short.
The stuff Prophecies are made of... - By: , 04 Feb 2005 
What if the bible wasn't a story of the past but instead written as a prophecy that is slowly being fullfilled... The lastest verse in this tale of heaven's angels & the "monkey's" of the Earth see's the angel Gabriel sending an angel to Earth to find a soul to be claimed that will finallly end the stalmate in Heaven...
Enter onto the scene Thomas Daggett a priest who lost his faith & turned dectetive... finding the angel Simon he searches for a girl entrusted with the soul which Gabriel seeks to claim as his own & only by killing her can it be his.
A truely inspiringly dark & original movie, with an awsome script. Director Gregory Widen probably better known for writing the Highlander films & Backdraft delivered the the first of his quartet of films (with Revelation due out at the end of the year) with the same dark & compelling story as his other works.
Christopher Walkin provides an absolutely blinding performance in a role that could have turely been written for him as the evil & emotionless renegade angel Gabriel. A character stereotype that Walkin play so well...
Elias Koteas, best known to many of my generation as the masked vigilate Casey Jones from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films... delivers a hard role very well... as the Priest-turn-Cop Daggett as he searches to find the girl & his faith, leading him to confront both Gabriel & Lucifer himself.
With supporting roles from Virginia Madsen, Eric Stoltz & a pre LOTR Viggo Mortensen as Lucifer, this is probably one of the best films in my collection only let down in places by the low budget set for it, but is one that I would highly recommend to anyone with an open mind.
good but bad - By: , 02 Jun 2004 This film is obviously about a prophesy.A man gives out a prophesy to a woman & it alll turns out true but along the way something happens. I'm not going to say what.
This movie is a confusing one so you have to watch it twice to grasp it. The only problem is once you know the plot it isnt exciting anymore.
Some may like it some may not.
