Simon was there when the war in Heaven came to an end and he watched a third of his fellow angels cast from their home, creating hell in the process. Now a second war is raging, but Heaven cannot hold this one as angels are coming to Earth, looking for something known as the dark soul that could shift the balance of power in Heaven itself. Thomas Daggett (Elias Koteas) is a cop, he had trained to be a Catholic priest but before he was ordained he suffered terrible visions of dying angels which traumatised him and robbed him of his faith. Years later he now works nights on investigations, but a strange visit from Simon (Eric Stoltz) at his home would start to change things in his life again. Simon really is an angel, and after talking to Thomas he returns to his modest apartment and is attacked by another of his kind. Simon gets the upper hand, gouging at the angel’s heart and then throwing him out of the window where he is unlucky enough to be hit by a car, but unfortunately Simon was also hurt in the struggle. Daggett is called in for a rare day assignment because though Simon has fled, several clues have been left behind including a thesis he himself had written while training to become a priest. Also left behind was a local newspaper for a small town, in which Simon had circled an article about the death of a decorated military officer. Investigation of the body shows that he certainly is not human, has no eyes, and is also a hermaphrodite. An ancient bible was also found on corpse, and Thomas is intrigued to discover that it has an extra chapter at the end, where John tells of the war in heaven between the angels. It also gives a prophecy of a second war between the angels over humanity, and how many in heaven resented God’s younger creations, grew jealous of the souls God had given them and felt he had cast them aside to favour us instead. Meanwhile someone else is looking for Simon however, another angel who is the ringleader of the rebelling angels, none other than the Archangel Gabriel.

Gabriel (Christopher Walken) isn’t the righteous being you’d expect, but a bitter and resentful being that despises the human race. However he is still in need of their abilities and resurrects Jerry (Adam Goldberg) to do things for him. Simon has meanwhile found the small town where the dark soul lies dormant in the body of a decorated but ruthless military officer. Simon extracts the soul and hides himself in a disused school building. He soon meets young Mary who is playing hide and seek in there and befriends Simon, much to the chagrin of her teacher Catherine (Virginia Madsen) who calls the police when she finds the ailing angel dwelling there. Unbeknownst to her, Mary goes back to see Simon one more time and he asks her to keep a secret, planting her with a kiss and transferring the dark soul to the body of this young child. Meanwhile Gabriel is making sure to eliminate as much evidence as possible, destroying the body of his fallen comrade, the angel Uziel, while Jerry steals the autopsy files. With that done, the pained Jerry must drive Gabriel out to find the dark soul, digging up the grave of the dead army man but discovering that the soul is already gone. Finding Simon, Gabriel tortures him for hours but cannot force the angel to give up his secret, and eventually allows him to die, leaving him as mere ashes. Thomas arrives on the scene soon after, convinced of the presence of angels on Earth looking for the dark soul, the soul of the cruellest, most despicably evil person in all creation. Mary’s grandmother, an old Native American, is deeply concerned about the way Mary has started to act and has arranged for a ritual to rid her body of the evil that has been implanted within her. Of course Gabriel cannot let this happen and desperately needs the soul for himself, and so with Thomas going on the run with Catherine and Mary they must keep the dark soul as far away from the archangel as possible, and they have some very unexpected help in the process.

What an interesting little film this is. The Prophecy is up until this point the only film directed by Gregory Widen, writer of the first Highlander movie, and it’s a worthy first attempt. Along with cinematographers Richard Clabaugh (he directed Python!) and Bruce Douglas Johnson, Widen managed to create a good atmosphere within the film ably backed by the film’s score which while clearly performed using keyboards captured the right tone for the piece without becoming too overblown. There are a couple of nice time lapse photography effects used to show the great patience of the angels, perched atop pieces of scenery silently awaiting the dawn of a new day. However a lot of scenes are shot very workmanlike without much in the way of creativity and there seems to be a bias both in the script and in the way things are shot. The angels, and later the Lord of Darkness himself, get the lion’s share of the best scenes, getting to look cool in their long dark coats and delivering numerous highly quotable lines of dialogue. My fondness for Eric Stoltz started when I watched this film several years ago as he is too cool in this film, nearly always bathed in warm orange sunlight to match his long hair, a finely styled goatee, his gentle benevolent manner – somehow his angelic portrayal feels so ‘right’ and its shame he dies so early into the film. Given even more favourable attention is, of course, the amazing Christopher Walken and it must be said that few men have got away with playing the same character (more than likely himself) so many times. His presence in the film is magnetic, his tall, wiry frame and his pallid complexion give him the air of a worn out, bitter man, but he is as relentless as you’d expect. Nearly every shot makes him look like the coolest goddamn angel who ever lived and has some fantastic lines of dialogue like:
Do you know how you got that dent in your top lip? Way back, before you were born, I told you a secret, then I put my finger there and I said "Shhhhh!"
However the real stand-out character doesn’t appear until the last part of the film and it’s a shame, because Viggo Mortensen made for one of the most entertaining Satans I’ve had the pleasure of watching. Long before Viggo became an ultra huge star thanks to Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings he gave a compelling, gleefully evil performance as the King of Lies. Complete with a fantastic contemporary take on the ‘Satanic Beard’ look complete with long hair and snarling little twisted dwarf henchman, Viggo is allowed to go into totally over the top insanely evil acting overdrive and he’s absolutely fantastic. Making offers you just can’t refuse like:
I can lay you out and fill your mouth with your mother's feces, or we can talk.
or giving Elias Koteas an insight into his childhood such as:
Little Tommy Dagget, I would listen to your sweet prayers every night, and you'd jump on your bed afraid I was under there, and I was!
Mortensen is clearly having a blast and it makes for some extremely entertaining viewing. In fact, so entertaining, that there really wasn’t much point cramming him into a film that already had a charismatic villain full of one-liners, and this is part of a wider problem with the film.

The Prophecy suffers from a great deal of wasted potential and a somewhat uneven storytelling. Regarding the characters talked about above, while they are memorable and very entertaining, the human beings are left out in the cold. Rather ironically while the film talks about God favouring humanity over angels, this film does the exact opposite as Catherine and Thomas are woefully incomplete characters. Virginia Madsen has little to work with as her character is of the most shallow kind, driven purely by the film’s events with no development of an actual personality. Elias Koteas does not fair much better and it’s a low down dirty shame because the film could be an exploration of his faith as he slowly regains it, but this is all swept over as quickly as possible. Why was he given these visions in the first place? Why is there no conflict between his old beliefs and his new ones? Once again his character just reacts directly to the situations occurring with only cursory attempts to express his actual feelings about it or what happened when he had the vision. Adam Goldberg is amusing as Jerry, the poor schmuck who had attempted suicide only to have Gabriel bring him back to like to act as his errand boy and chauffeur and the conversations between him and Gabriel are great and provide some much needed comic relief, but this promising aspect of the film goes underused too. In fact, generally the film rushes by far too quickly, skating over what could have been interesting plot points, and also feeling very disjointed. The early scene where Simon appears in Thomas’ house felt tacked on from a larger part of the film as Simon merely says a load of cryptic nonsense and then the scene ends and its never really referenced again. Simon himself seemed like he should have been a more prominent character but is killed off after he transfers the dark soul, he could have served the story far more as a guide or mentor to Thomas, helping him to explore his faith and telling him how to beat Gabriel. The Devil felt very tacked on as well, as entertaining as he is he was rather superfluous to the plot as he does little to help the narrative as he arrives so late in the film and climax was already on the way. I also couldn’t help feeling just a little disappointed with Christopher Walken’s performance, while he is really good, he really doesn’t act like an angel. This is one of the most highly ranked angels, but he comes off as more of a mob boss than any sort of heavenly spirit, more mafia than seraph.

The Prophecy is an entertaining film that zips by at quite a rate and contains two greatly entertaining performances from Christopher Walken and Viggo Mortensen. However, these performances feel out of place like they’ve just been dropped into the middle of an extremely average b-movie as the rest of the film is full of untapped potential and is nowhere near as clever as it could have been. Issues of belief, of losing it and regaining it, are merely hinted at where they were desperately needed to make the lead characters interesting, but as it is Virginia Madsen and Elias Koteas are mere props while Viggo Mortensen and especially Christopher Walken run rampant. Even worse, Satan was so entertaining he so easily could have had a film of his own but unfortunately he ends up as an afterthought. Satan who, indeed.