Thoughts on Fallen

 

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*Detective John Hobbes (Denzel Washington) consults with partner Jonesy (John Goodman, in a role written for him; how's that for celebrity?)*
"What's the point of life, huh, Jonesy?"

"(after thinking about it and lighting a cigarette) The point of life is we catch bad guys."

"Yeah, that's what I used to think. It's not good enough, Jonesy. You can shoot me for talking like this, but ..."

"Hey, it's two o'clock in the morning, you can talk any way you want."

"If you believe, no explanation is necessary. If you don't believe, no explanation is possible."

-- tagline to The Possession of Joel Delaney, 1972

Never send a cop to do an exorcist's job, Fallen warns viewers. Hobbes may be skilled with the deductive reasoning, quick escapes and marksmanship, but he's facing off against the fallen angel Azazel (embodied as Elias Koteas, Robert Joy, et al.). Gretta (Embeth Davitz) provides Hobbes with knowledge and Fallen with gravitas. Since a Gretta-Hobbes pairing isn't implied, they might as well have gone all the way and made her a nun. Jonesy, Lt. Stanton (Donald Sutherland) and Lou (James Gandolfini) provide Fallen with characters to fear that Hobbes has gone insane, plus Sutherland and Gandolfini do double duty as folks you could see Washington having to confront in the end. Finally, there's Art (Gabriel Casseus), Hobbes' brother*, and his son Sam (Michael J. Pagan), for the obligatory "Danger can and will follow you home, John!" factor.

*If you didn't pay attention, you'd swear they were a couple.

I hope you don't think I don't like Fallen. I actually had a good time with it. Seeing a movie with extreme supernatural phenomenon -- who knew possessions could be brief and painless? -- on the same day that I saw the comparatively grounded Scream made for a good balance. I'm not sure that either movie would hold up well with a rewatch, though. Maybe just sequences. Fallen, written by Nicholas Kazan and directed by Gregory Hoblit, is justifiably famous for the moments when Hobbes and Gretta each realize Azazel's ease of transportation. But there's also scenes with a whole lot of talk, talk talk.

"What are we doing here, you know what I'm saying? Why do we even exist? Us?"

"Maybe it's God, Hobbes."

"Yeah, it could be. ... I have a hard time believe that we're ... that we're part of some huge ... moral experiment, you know, conducted by a greater being than us. I mean, if there's a greater being than we are, why does he give a shit about us?"

"(after John compares man to ants) Hobbes, I'm following you, but at the same time, I'm losing you. ... I mean, are you heading someplace here?

Emmanuel Levy, in his Variety review of Fallen, felt the movie makers reached too high. They had "a pretentiously philosophical theme: evil is eternal and knows no bounds." Over at Entertainment Weekly, Lisa Schwarzbaum said Fallen is "what happens when too many mystics attend a Hollywood pitch meeting." She also observed the pop culture trend of "spiritual" mumbo jumbo as 2000 neared. "My dear friends, this isn't religion. This is fad, trivia." Again, I try not to come in with pre-conceived ideas, but movies just seemed so much more frivolous around this time. I think it had something to do with society preparing for the new millennium. We felt optimistic and/or superhuman, so we made more apocalyptic films? I dunno.

Anyway, while I was satisfied with how Fallen progressed, I'll say the movie could have spent a hair more time with its climax and finale. There's Sutherland, Goodman and Washington, but the last man does most of the work. Coming in second for sustained impact is Mick Jagger. "Time Is on My Side," indeed!

"That's my point. Are we heading someplace? If we don't figure it out ..."

"Maybe if you figure it out ... you die. Heart attack, stroke. You figure out what's what, you don't get to hang around anymore. You get promoted. *points to heaven* Meanwhile, Delores, she says we're put here to do one thing."

"One thing? What's that?"

"It's different. It's, uh, different for everybody. Hers is lasagna. (More discussion on the idea, then ...) But when the moment comes, we either do the right thing or wrong."

*A little more discussion about what that means before the phone rings*

Recommended.

Thoughts:

-- "You know what you'd look like with this sandwich up your ass? ... Like a fat, stupid fuck with a sandwich up his ass."

-- Box Office: Grossing $25.2 million domestically on a reported $46 million budget, this opened at No. 3 and came in at No. 75 for 1998.

-- Critic's Corner, Denzel and Hollywood: While Roger Ebert felt Denzel was convincing as a cop, he also didn't believe he played him correctly, as a film noir lead. "There's something essentially hopeful and sunny about Washington ... there should be, at the core of the protagonist in any noir story, guilt and shame, as if they feel they deserve their fate." Janet Maslin, meanwhile, saw that "this is another of the star's platonic pictures." I wonder if there would have been added or restored sexual tension with Gretta if Arnold Schwarzenegger had taken the role of Hobbes, which IMDB says he was considered for.

-- Critic's Corner, the movie/Hollywood: "It's got ideas; it's got scope, reach, a sense of darkness falling. I just wish it was more fun," Stephen Hunter wrote. Peter Travers: "Hoblit directs this claptrap in high style."

-- Fanservice Junction: Hobbes walking around in his underwear before discovering what happened to Art.

-- Today in Coincidences: Fallen is the second consecutive movie to remind me of RadioShack, in this case with a somewhat prominent subway station ad.

-- Hey, It's ...! Aida Turturro and Reno Wilson. Also of note, Pagan will show up later this year when I watch How Stella Got Her Groove Back.

-- As clever as it is for Azazel to survive at the end by possessing a cat, I wish he had to have picked more of an "outdoors" animal, like a deer or a trout.

-- "See you around."

-- Next Week: Slappy and the Stinkers. On deck: Spice World.