THE PROPHECY
A film review by Derek Banas
Copyright 1995 Derek Banas
Yet again we have here another example of a possibly great story that is ruined by trying to cram to many characters and scenes into ninety minutes.
The movie stars Thomas Daggett (Elias Koteas) a former priest become cop that has been thrown into the middle of a war started in heaven between two angels, the arch-angel Gabriel (Christopher Walken) and the good angel Simon (Eric Stoltz). I thought I was going to like this movie because Simon seemed to be a very charismatic character that was a good opposite to Gabriel, who played a evil yet comical in a gruel way character because the story was developed well in the beginning in that what was occuring was that Gabriel came down from heaven to steal the soul of a evil general to lead his evil angels against the good, Simon got there first and hide the soul in a little girl. But then my opinion soon changed when Thomas started to take over with the same old tortured cop we've all seen so often before. And worst of all we were constantly again and again seeing angels impaled on stakes which became more of an annoyance than a good addition to the movie. And as if the story wasn't ruined enough then we have two more worthless characters added to the scene. Catherine (Virginia Madsen) the school teacher of the little girl that Simon hid the soul in. And probably worst of all a very small part played by Lucifer. Isn't that ironic Lucifer playing a small part but that is what it was and a part better left out all together because all he did was tell Catherine a secret we never hear and then ruined the ending all together leaving the crowd hating him more than ever?
Like I said, there were many possibilities in this movie but in trying to make up for wasted time spent with Thomas and Catherine the ending became a quicky job that left everyone very disappointed. I did like a few things about this movie however such as the camera work and some of the scenes were beautiful and probably one of the best parts in the whole movie was Gabriels tortured sidekick praying for death and of course Simon and Gabriel. If you want a few and I mean a few good scenes and want to see a few nice scenes you might want to see this but don't expect a good ending and be prepared to leave the theater asking yourself what was Lucifer's secret and why was he in it for except to ruin the ending. I give this a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10.
-- Derek
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