The Prophecy is a film I’d not watched in a very long time before starting this Virginia Madsen rewatch thing and I was quite looking forward to watching it again.
It’s a thriller from 1995 which brings the Angels of Heaven down to Earth to battle for the souls of humanity. It stars Christopher Walken as Gabriel as he stalks the Earth looking for an evil soul on Earth to use in his battle against Lucifer.
Which, means the film can’t go wrong. Right? I mean, Christopher Walken as a millitarised Angel in a fight of literal biblical proportions. Right?
The film is set in Los Angeles, we primarily follow Thomas (Elias Koteas), a Detective who used to full to the brim of Catholic faith but it was lost when he kept getting visions of an Angelic war up in Heaven.
In the modern day, two Angels have fallen to Earth. Simon (Eric Stoltz) and Uziel (not Eric Stoltz). Simon makes short work of Uziel which leaves Thomas with a crime and a body to investigate, he just happens to have connections to it all from his Catholic days. Handy.
Gabriel arrives on Earth in search of an Evil soul he needs to tip the balance of Good and Evil in the heavenly wars. To help him in his quest he stops a young man, Jerry (Adam Goldberg), from committing suicide. Jerry sets about destroying all evidence of Angels that have been left behind by Simon and Uziel. Meanwhile Simon has made his way to the funeral of a recently deceased Korean warlord. He takes the warlords soul and stashes it in the body of a very much alive young girl.
This is the soul that Gabriel needs for his war, obviously.
The soul is too much for the little girl to handle, she immediately falls ill. Her teacher, Katherine (our own Angel, Virginia Madsen) finds her and takes her home to care for her.
And then it’s all Angels, Demons, Lucifer and all other things biblical. I won’t go into detail as there is half an interesting take on it all stashed away in there somewhere if you’ve never seen it.
Time hasn’t been as kind to this one as I’d hoped. I mean, it’s not bad as such but you can’t help but wonder what more could have done with the material today. Christopher Walken seems somehow, as though he wasn’t quite ready to be Christopher Walken just yet.
It’s not that it’s bad, at all. I used to enjoy The Prophecy, and it’s sequels. But it’s just not aged all that well. By my standards anyways. I found myself a little disenchanted with it. Rose colour glasses at play methinks.
Virginia plays her part well, as always. She’s probably not given as much to chew on as she could have been but it’s not the first film to waste her talent and it isn’t the last one either. It is however good to see her each and every time she’s on screen.
The Prophecy would get two sequels featuring Christopher Walken, and then two more after that (which I’ve never seen) but Virginia wouldn’t return for any of those.
Probably for the best, although she had a good time on the movie and worked with people she really wanted to work with, the film itself didn’t sit that well with her according to her in an interview with The AV Club;
“That was not a real movie. That was, like, one of those completely ridiculous situations where they didn’t even have a whole script when we went in to shoot. But it was a good idea. The movie was a really, really good idea. And the director [Gregory Widen] was the writer of Backdraft, so we thought we were in good hands. Like, “Oh, he’ll be able to write it if it’s not done!” But it’s impossible to write as you go. That’s just something that never works, no matter how talented people may think they are.”
Might be for the best I’ve never seen the sequels then…
Availability:
Very good, available on DVD almost anywhere you can think of and had a 4K UHD release not that long ago along with the two Christopher Walken staring sequels.
Gallery:
Trailer:
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