New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Hollywood is a machine. Every week, every month and every year countless films are released into theatres and not every one is as successful as the studio heads would hope. Sometimes the publicity machine was askew, sometimes the movie targeted an odd demographic, sometimes the release was steamrolled by a much larger movie and occasionally the movie is flat out bad.

But Hollywood's loss is our gain. There is a veritable treasure trove of film out there that you may not have seen. I will be your guide to this veritable wilderness of unwatched film. It will be my job to steer you towards the action, adventure, drama and comedy that may have eluded you, and at the same time, steer you away from some truly unwatchable dreck.

Hopefully we'll stumble across some entertainment that may have slid under your radar. Wish us luck.

The Prophecy (1995)

We're taking a trip way back today, back to 1995 to take a look at a Christopher Walken flick. The plot for this one is simple. The second war in heaven has raged for millennia now, and both armies of angels are scrambling to keep the other from gaining any sort of advantage. To that end, Simon, an Angel played extremely well by Eric Stoltz, comes to Earth and steals the blackest soul in existence from a deceased military colonel. The opposing side, led by the Angel Gabriel (Christopher Walken), is in hot pursuit of that same soul. Apparently this soul is so black, so treacherous, so evil that it will tilt the scales of victory for Gabriel and end the war in heaven.

Why he didn't just go hire Karl Rove is beyond me.

At any rate, with the soul stolen, Gabriel himself comes to earth to retrieve it and he does so with the usual Walken panache. Standing in his way are former priest Thomas Dagget (Elias Koteas) and schoolteacher Katherine Henley (Virginia Madsen). They're both important parts of the film, but really, this is all about Gabriel and his brutal and sometimes amusing quest to get that soul.

It's a bit of a shame that Walken played this character the way he did. Gabriel is very cool and menacing, but there are a lot of scenes that make you laugh or shudder at Walken, and not Gabriel. At this point, I don't even really know if people want to see Christopher Walken stretch himself or try new things. As a human being, he radiates a cool sense of charisma that locks the viewer into a movie, and while that's fine, when you compare Gabriel to truly great film bad guys like Hannibal Lecter or Heath Ledger's Joker, it comes up short. Is it fair to expect Walken to put up an Oscar caliber performance in a little horror film? Probably not. Could he have? He's Walken. It's possible.

The other two primaries in this film, Koteas and Madsen do a better job with what they've got. Koteas has been playing slimeballs on screen for so long now that it's honestly refreshing to see him playing the good guy here. He does it well, playing a cop who is wrestling with his loss of faith and the evidence that suggests he's stumbled into something way out of his pay grade. Madsen also does a solid job in her schoolteacher role. It's not really a stretch for her abilities either, but she does it with a little panache, and she doesn't play the character like the standard female pushover. She ends up shooting Gabriel three different times during the movie on two separate occasions, and while the shots have little effect, I have to applaud any female characters willingness to pick up a weapon and engage the bad guy head on.

The supporting cast in this film is also surprisingly solid. Amanda Plummer and Adam Goldberg play undead slaves to Gabriel, Plummer plays her part with surprising sorrow and rage while Goldberg plays his part more for comedic value. Steve Hytner plays a coroner and takes calm sarcasm and indifference to whole new level. And then there's Viggo Mortensen. Cast as Satan, he's really the only one in the whole movie who actually holds his own with Walken on screen, and while you feel like Walken did this for kicks, you really do feel like Mortensen was doing his level best to channel evil in a way we haven't seen for quite some time.

This is an interesting film with an intriguing premise done with little more than some effective acting and dialogue. The cast is eclectic, but good and while Walken could have been better, he's still Walken, and that's usually good enough. The producers don't try to bury the film in special effects, but use effective storytelling and some smart acting to tell the story for them. I'm unsure if that was a conscious or budgetary decision, but however it was made, it worked.

The Prophecy is supposedly a horror film, but nothing in this film will even make you blink. I assure you, if you've watched CSI on television, you've seen far gorier material than this. That doesn't make this a terrible film, it just makes it one that was tame for its genre. It's still very watchable, though. Watchable enough that it spawned a pair of sequels, neither of which even came close to catching the original's charm.

I can say that I enjoyed the Prophecy. I liked the way that Stoltz, Walken and Mortenson played their angelic characters. I liked the concept the movie delivered. I enjoyed watching Mortensen and Walken chew on the scenery. It's an interesting film that's most likely sitting in the cheap rental section at your DVD store and occasionally makes the rounds on late night entertainment. If you happen to stumble across it, you should pick it up and treat yourself.