"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, and from now till kingdom come, the only thing you can count on in your existence is never understanding why." - Gabriel
"You see, I'm not here to help you little bitch because I love you or because I care for you, but because two hells is one hell too many, and I can't have that. - Lucifer
"Years later, of all the Gospels I learnt in seminary school, a verse from St. Paul stays with me. It is perhaps the strangest passage in the Bible, in which he writes: "Even now in Heaven there are Angles carrying savage weapons." - Daggett
I remember seeing this one in the theater! I remember it being built up in the press as to be super evil and scary and satanic and everyone was psyched to go see it. It was supposed to THE EXORCIST good. Was it? Well, let's not freak out. Its a pretty good flick from a formula that happens every few years or so. Specifically good angels versus bad angels a la LEGION from a few years back. But with a very good lineup: Christopher Walken, Eric Stoltz, Viggo Mortensen and CASEY JONES from the first TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES flick! Curiously this one also stars Virginia Madsen who I didn't even mention, but was in the last movie I reviewed HIGHLANDER II: THE QUICKENING as well. All of them starring in THE PROPHECY!!!
So this cop (Casey Jones...real name Elias Koteas) Daggett was supposed to be a priest but he chickened out because he saw visions of demons. Fast forward to present day and he's lost his faith and chasing crooks. One day two angels decide to fall to Earth from heaven searching for this super evil dude's soul. Simon (Stoltz) is trying to find it before Uziel (who is supposed to be a bad angel I think). Uziel tries to kill Simon but ends up getting iced. They call Daggett down to the morgue because he was on the scene. They're all tripped out because the dude has both male and female organs, and other weird stuff. I think he didn't have any eyes. Anyway, Simon is tracking down this veteran who died (the evil guy) and gets his soul and removes it from his body. Daggett does some investigating, gets a warning from Simon, finds the obituary in his rented room and goes to the town where the evil soul was.
The coroner finds a handwritten bible on Uziel and gives it to Daggett. It contains a 23rd chapter in Revelation that is unknown. Daggett translates it and finds out there was a second war in heaven where all the angels are pissed that God made and favored humans in a greater light than all his other creations... even the angels. He learns that the "dark soul" it speaks about is the old man's and whoever has control of it can use it as a weapon in the heaven war I guess. So Gabriel (Walken) the head neck chopper for the bad angels comes down to earth to get shit done. He gets a helper and finds out where they have to go to retrieve the soul. Simon meanwhile hides the dark soul in this little Native American girls body. She gets sick but is taken care of by her teacher.
Daggett finds the charred remains of Uziel thanks to Gabriel and decides to go to Chimney Rock Arizona to investigate whatever is going on. Gabriel finds the body of the vet but sees the soul is gone. He then sniffs out Simon and tries to convince him to give it up to no avail. He then rips Simon's heart out and sets him afire! BRUTAL! Daggett finds out the old man was a fucked up cannibal. Gabriel questions the schoolchildren. The teacher goes to the little possessed girls house to check on her and finds Daggett. She takes him to some cave and they see visions of a gnarly angel war with dead bodies and angels impaled on stakes and all manner of heavy shit that would make mom's cringe. They head back over to the girl's house and find Gabriel trying to extract the soul from the little girl. They foil his plans by killing his assistant and blowing up the little girls family's trailer.
Gabriel recruits another helper from a local hospital. Daggett and the teacher go to a Native American reservation and they prepare to perform an exorcism on the girl. All of a sudden Lucifer himself (Mortensen) shows up! He basically tells them that nobody has went to hell since this war started and he's pissed. He thinks that if Gabriel wins then the "new heaven" they are trying to create will be exactly what he already is the king of. Another Hell. And that for Lucifer is one Hell too many. So he tells Daggett to use Gabriel's lagging faith against him. Then we have the big showdown. I won't tell you how it ends. If you're wondering whether or not you should watch this one, go ahead. The one anyway. I can't say anything for the four sequels. But maybe I'll get to those one day. I'll be the second one is at least worth watching. Maybe...
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