In a corrupt city, honorable Police Detective John Hobbes (Denzel Washington) watches Edgar Reese (Elias Koteas), the serial killer he captured, executed. Soon afterwards, another serial killer starts using Reese’s methods. Hobbes and his partner, Jonesy (John Goodman), investigate the murders, and Hobbes slowly realizes that they are not looking for a man, but a fallen angel that can jump from body to body with a touch. Additionally, there is a connection with a heroic cop who killed himself years ago and whose daughter, Gretta Milano (Embeth Davidtz), knows about the demon. However, Hobbes’s boss, Lieutenant Stanton (Donald Sutherland) warns him not to follow that line of investigation.
Does this really belong on the Christian Mythos list? It’s a close call. I like to see something a bit more Biblical in these films. This one has a demon, but by a small change, it could be any kind of dark spirit or ghost. However, everyone in the film keeps talking about God and fallen angels (note the title) and words in ancient Aramaic, so I put it at the edge of the list.
Fallen is a thriller wrapped in paranoia with a first class lead and a stable of excellent character actors filling in the rest of the cast. There are several inspired twists at the end, and it has one of the few voiceover narrations I’ve ever liked (though it is better the second time through).
Still, with all that’s right, there was no way to make this material fresh. The ’80s saw a crowd of body jumping serial killer flicks. A few, like The Hidden, were mindless fun, but most, like The Horror Show, were oozing boils on the history of film. Fallen may have shown the material some respect, but when it’s been trampled on and reused this many times, it is never going to look really good.
I didn’t use the word “respect” accidentally, as it suggests a larger problem. Fallen is almost reverent with its story, missing myriad opportunities to put some energy into the proceedings. It is edited so that the viewer can treasure every word, taking them in and repeating them once or twice before anything happens onscreen. Plenty of time is given for the viewer to chew over Hobbes’s pain as well. Often, it is enough time to go out and buy a beer or two. A re-edit would do wonders. There are other minor flaws, like the demon-vision used whenever we see what The Fallen sees, or the tendency to make everyone look suspicious, but those are insignificant next to the slow pacing.
The cast and the ending makes Fallen worth looking up on your cable movie channel, as long as you have some free time anyway.