Fallen (1998)

Starring: Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, Embeth Davidtz, and Elias Koteaus
Grade: C+

Fallen was almost there, but it doesn’t quite live up to the momentum it builds considerably well throughout. Even so, let it be known that Denzel Washington was not the problem.

Summary

Our narrator, Detective John Hobbes (Washington), begins the movie by telling us the time when he almost died. As he talks, we see a wounded Hobbes stumbling into the snow somewhere in a forest.

Then, we go back to sometime before this event. This is where we see Hobbes going to a prison to visit Edgar Reese (Koteaus), a serial killer he helped put away. Following a conversation with Lt. Stanton (Sutherland) for a bit, Hobbes is called in to see Reese. Reese, noticeably uncaring about the whole situation, has a camera crew there to film a documentary about him. As he talks shit to Hobbes, he reaches through his cell to shake Hobbes’s hand. He reciprocates, even though Reese holds onto his hand for an unusually long time. After referring to Hobbes as a “good fellow”, he starts speaking an unknown language, with Hobbes taking it as his cue to leave. Before he goes, Reese gives him an unwanted riddle saying, “Why is there a space between Lyons and Spakowsky?”. He doesn’t give an answer and since Hobbes doesn’t give a fuck anyway, he leaves. As Reese is executed in a gas chamber in front of a group of onlookers that includes Hobbes, he sings “Time Is on My Side” by the Rolling Stones.

Afterwards, a happy Hobbes goes to a bar to meet his co-workers and friends in detectives Jones (Goodman) and Lou (Gandolfini). After Lou questions whether Hobbes would ever (hypothetically) accept any illegal side money and Hobbes emphatically telling him he would never, we see the guard from the prison scene show up elsewhere on some random street corner. Oddly enough, he is whistling “Time Is on My Side” to himself. He bumps into one person, and this person touches another with the camera shifting perspective to each person. Eventually, it gets to some random guy who’s been touched, and he walks across the street and quits his job after talking shit to his boss. That night, Hobbes is woken up by a phone call, but there’s no one on the other line. The next morning, Hobbes goes to the kitchen to talk to his intellectually disabled brother Art (Gabriel Casseus) and Art’s son (Hobbes’s nephew) in Sam (Michael J. Pagan), who he lives with. After Sam leaves for school and Hobbes eases Art’s mind about if he’s bothered or not by their living situation, we go to see the random guy who quit his job earlier. The guy calmly eats some cereal after murdering a guy in his house. Later that morning, we see that same guy watch Hobbes as he gets to the police department for work. He stands there next to the public phone. After Hobbes gets inside, he is told he has a phone call. The guy on the other line spouts a random address at Hobbes and tells him it’s a clue before he hangs up.

Hobbes and Jones go to investigate the address and find the dead body. It has puncture wounds from a syringe and the number “18” written on his chest. After seeing the cereal, the two see something written on the wall. Shockingly enough, it’s the riddle Reese told Hobbes before he died.

They go back to the department to discuss with Stanton whether Reese had an accomplice, or if it’s a copycat killer who saw the documentary. Once Stanton suggests a bunch of people have already seen it and offers them virtually nothing to go off of, Hobbes asks a co-worker the same riddle Reese told him to see if she can make heads or tails out of it. The surprise is Lou telling him they had a Spakowsky on the force his rookie year who was a total asshole. He tells him the guy’s name used to be on this stone wall poster for “Outstanding Courageous Valor”. Hobbes finds the poster and there are numerous names on it. In-between the names of “George Lyons” and “Anton Spakowsky” is a space with the name removed. After Stanton pleads ignorance to the situation, Hobbes goes on his computer that night to do some research. It leads him to the name “Robert Milano”, a decorated cop who randomly decided to go to a cabin in the middle of nowhere and subsequently died while cleaning his gun. He thinks Milano is either a dirty cop or a woman did it. Strangely enough, after Hobbes tells Stanton this information, Stanton tells him he should keep whatever he finds to himself.

What is up with this Milano guy?

After talking with Jones about some up-to-date information about the previous crime scene, he calls the directory to get the number of Sylvia Milano. During the phone call, he tells Stanton that if someone dies because he wanted to keep his mouth shut then it’s on him. Stanton gets defensive again before he leaves. Back on the phone, the directory says they can’t find anything on Sylvia, so he asks for the number of Robert’s daughter Gretta (Davidtz). Jones questions whether the killer could’ve been a cop or not because they knew the poison Reese used and quoted the riddle he said. Regardless, the two watch the documentary and try to decipher what language Reese was speaking in his cell. Later, Hobbes goes to Gretta’s apartment for a visit. To explain the purpose of the visit, he talks about how Edgar Reese threw out her father’s name in a roundabout way, and he wanted to know more about him. After correctly guessing that Reese liked to sing and how he tried to touch Hobbes, Gretta agrees to tell him what she knows on the condition that their conversation “never happened”.

Apparently, her father was a great cop, but he shot himself. What led to this was a reporter finding out he had been under investigation. He caught a killer and the copycat crimes started, with evidence mounting up against him like fingerprints and witnesses. However, despite the press never getting any real proof, Robert’s medal was rescinded. When he died, the mayor, the governor, and the chief of police made sure this evidence went away to make him look like a hero. In actuality, Robert knew there was no chance of beating the mounting evidence towards him, so he went to the cabin in the mountains, a place that has been in her mother’s family for generations. Once he went there, he committed suicide. Greta is still positive he was innocent, but she’s afraid of telling Hobbes anything more because she doesn’t want her life to be in danger. Realizing this isn’t going anywhere further, he asks if he can call her if he has any other questions, but she tells him she’d rather he didn’t. Before he leaves, she asks Hobbes if he believes in God. Though he does, he admits faith is “hard to sustain” in his line of work.

What is Gretta hiding?

Once he leaves, he passes the killer on the street. He walked shoulder to shoulder with the man. After we see that man bump into another after leaving the subway, we cut to Hobbes waking up Art and Sam on the couch, sending them to bed. Once again, they get a phone call and Art answers. It’s no one. Sometime after, the killer calls his old job to see when he’s working, saying he might have been drunk because he doesn’t remember anything. The woman on the phone has to remind him he quit. The killer is totally confused. It’s like something possessed him to do what he did. Following this phone call, his place is broken into by the man he bumped into after leaving the subway, and he’s murdered by him. Then, the man sets up the cereal much like how the last killer did. He calls Hobbes from the apartment. Since Hobbes thinks it’s the same person who’s been calling, he puts the phone up to Reese’s documentary that he’s watching on his television. The next day, Hobbes and Jones meet with a linguist to discuss the language Reese was speaking. The linguist believes it is Syrian Aramaic, a biblical tongue. Only a few nomadic tribes still use it. Unfortunately, he’s still not sure what he’s saying. Soon after, Hobbes gets another random phone call that leaves an address. It’s the scene of another murder. Hobbes and Jones investigate the scene, and they see a new message written on the wall behind the mirror saying, “Look in mirror”.

Hobbes admits to Jones that the same guy who was dead in this crime scene was a guy he walked past the day before. They also find that the syringe with the same poison was used, and the body has the number “2” painted on his chest instead of the “18” from earlier. Whoever is doing this has a thing for Hobbes.

After Lou suspiciously wonders about Hobbes doing research back at the department and asks him about it, we see Jones go to find Hobbes at the park playing basketball with Sam. As Art subs in for Hobbes, he talks to Jones. Jones reiterates what they know: the first guy killed someone in the fashion he did and three days later, someone does the same shit to him. Hobbes assumes both men were killed by the same person. Later, Hobbes goes up to the cabin that Robert Milano died at to investigate. It’s decrepit and destroyed. After searching through the basement, he finds a small photograph of the back of the room. On the back of the photograph, the word “Look” is written. He goes to this side of the room to investigate this spot and starts washing the dirt off the wall to see what it says. On it, the name “Azazel” is written. After finding out through minor research that it means “Evil spirit of the wilderness”, he finds Gretta on the street to tell her about his findings, wanting her to tell him more about what Azazel is. He mentions that one of the books her father had says it’s a demon that moves “by touch”. Startled, Gretta implores him to walk away and leaves him hanging. Back at the department, Stanton shows Hobbes evidence from the phone company that the killer/killers responsible called his house from the scene of the crime right around the time the people were killed. Hobbes reminds Stanton that Reese used to do the same thing, so whoever is doing this is imitating Reese, or is with him in one way or another.

He questions how many times he has to change his number, with Stanton saying the more this has to happen, the more he wonders if it’s coming from the inside, like a cop for instance.

Following this, Jones tells him he officially got the translation from the Aramaic. It says, “I can’t enter you by touch, but even when I can get inside you after I’m spirit, I won’t. I’ll fuck you up and down left and right. If that doesn’t work, I have other ways”.

We’re not sure who is after Hobbes, but this tells us it may be otherworldly.

My Thoughts:

Fallen tries a lot of different things to keep us on our toes. It’s a supernatural thriller with some action, but it tries to combine this with elements of horror and neo-noir. The first half of the film feels like a regular cop movie, but as the secrets of the case start to unfold, we are shone to the real reason we came. In doing so, we see the potential Fallen had to be something really great. Did it reach that level? Not really, but the teasing of it was entertaining.

Keep in mind, it’s generally hard for me to rank a Denzel Washington movie too low.

To grab our attention midstory, we are introduced to a powerful demon named Azazel wishing to terrorize our hero, John Hobbes. It seems like it’s for no reason at first, but once Hobbes does some investigating into some of the books about the demon, it is stated that “They stalk those who prey upon him”. Since he’s a genuine good-guy cop determined to pursue any elements of danger or evil, he essentially ropes himself into this based off of his own principles. Once this element is brought to light, we start to sit up in our chairs a bit. Going into Fallen, I was expecting a “regular” cop movie led by Denzel. For the record, even if it was this, I still would’ve watched it. Nevertheless, knowing that supernatural demons were also at play, my interest was piqued even more than it already was. This is mostly because I never thought we’d see Washington in a movie that mixes so many genres different from the usual projects he seeks out, along with the wild themes presented here.

Once it’s revealed how the demon’s abilities work, you start to really get invested in the story. We realize this movie will start to get much more eccentric as time moves on. Thankfully, time is on our side (*winks at the nonexistent camera*). From a writing and editing standpoint, I like how Fallen managed to be a movie about the supernatural with no noticeable special effects to speak of. Everything stays relatively grounded despite the presence of something otherworldly, and it’s cool how they manage do keep things exicting through character work and solid suspense built within the story. The large scale, big budget demon stuff wasn’t needed. Actually, it’s impressive how they manifested this demon in front of us, but we never know it’s true form. It’s a spirit that transforms itself by moving from person to person by a single touch, giving supporting characters, and even the smallest of extras, a chance to be an evil demon. Now, though I did like the transferring idea, no one made their “demon” performance good enough for me to think that a mass-murdering spirit was in the room. Just because someone sings a song in a creepy way doesn’t make the actor’s performance more convincing, though I admit they tricked me with Lou. The only person that I thought might have done something interesting with it was Donald Sutherland, but he never gets the chance. Elias Koteaus got it down in the opening but after that, I wasn’t impressed by any one person specifically, except that old guy on the street who made eye contact with Hobbes.

That old son of a bitch had the demon look in his eyes.

The “transferring through touch” is such a simple concept, but it’s very effective. I was surprised at how well this translated onscreen too. Every time it happens, we see this shotty POV shot of the spirit, giving off a highly memorable, arthouse-style look. You’re left in the dark for the first part of the movie because we don’t know for sure what’s going on but once it’s explained, I appreciated it much more. It gave Fallen its own specific flavor, a look that made the movie standout to keep us guessing while keeping us at a level of excitement for what’s going to happen next. Additionally, it made for some big moments. When we see Hobbes come to the realization as to how easy Azazel can transfer a body and he stares with his shocked look, it gives a real sense that Hobbes is frightened because he didn’t realize what he got himself into. No one can rattle the confidence of Denzel Washington but when you see the fear in his eyes in this scene, with the POV demon shot staring at a horrified Hobbes, it makes for a great movie moment.

The narration provided by Washington did not fit the film whatsoever. It never added anything and seemed to only exist to make sense of the final minute of the film. As I stated before, Fallen was trying to go for a neo-noir feel, but it didn’t work. The tone was more action hero-based and less hard-boiled detective influenced. To make it work, you would have to change the cinematography slightly and the feel of the movie would have to be different. It would’ve helped if Hobbes was less of a good guy as well. Denzel still makes the heroic character work in a darker film, but considering the theme and the endgame, the characterization of Hobbs needed to be a bit more flawed for the story to flow better. Plus, it would’ve added a lot more tension. Hobbes is a great guy and a wholesome character, too wholesome for what is going to happen. He doesn’t smoke, refuses to take any illegal payouts as a cop, and he takes care of his intellectually disabled brother and his son in his home. One interesting thing he states is that he believes in God, but he admits his job tests this at times. This was their chance to do something different. Why couldn’t they test his faith a bit more? He doesn’t flip out at the circumstances enough, despite a literal demon coming after him. He should be questioning things a lot more than he does like why he had to be the one chosen to go to war with a demon from hell when he’s seemingly outmatched.

He doesn’t have to be on the level of Jericho Cane in End of Days, but Hobbes should’ve had more personal turmoil within him to make sense of this darker story.

It’s not the question of whether he may lose his faith in God or anything, it’s more of asking why he has to be the one put in this situation to save the day. Why was he the man chosen to fight Azazel? Gretta explains there is a network of people who believe that “God limited demons and made them mortal, and he put a few of us here to find them”. Initially, this gives us the idea that John Hobbes is a soldier of God, a human archangel in a way (or at least it plays with the idea). He is shocked at this notion from Gretta, but as he gets deeper and deeper into this case and is working his ass off to figure out how to beat this demon, even if it costs him everything, it starts to look like it’s coming true. Gretta says that the right person with the right character and knowledge can pull this off. Is it him? It would make sense for the John Hobbes character to go in this direction, considering how well Washington does in another determined action hero performance, but he never truly gets there even though the story was calling for it.

I feel like the buildup was setting us up for something on a larger scale. Gretta even says at one point, “If there’s even one human being you care about, don’t take this case”.

With a line like that, this payoff needed to be crazy!

With the way things turned out, my idea felt like a much better option than the “waste everyone’s time” route they took us on instead, only teasing us with the possibility that something larger and much more biblical was in store for us.

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

Is it him? Is it her? No, it’s actually nobody. It’s nobody at all. We don’t even see what happened to Gretta! We just hope she’s taking care of Sam while living in fear for the rest of her life! This whole movie felt like it was built around the swerve. In doing so, it felt like a waste of time. I can accept the bad guy winning, but the way they got there was too much. The buildup was becoming more and more intriguing, and the twists are enjoyable, but there was one too many of them in the unraveled climax. I had no idea what the hell John Goodman was doing either. Whatever he was trying to do, he did not have that in him. When he tried acting like this maniacal and somewhat goofy villain, all he did was remind me that he was in Blues Brothers 2000, and it instantly got me mad. Despite how cool the idea may have seemed in the screenplay, it didn’t translate nearly as well as it should have.

As the sole female character in this film, I was expecting much more out of Embeth Davidtz too. She had plenty of screen time for us to understand Gretta as much as we understand Hobbes. Despite this, we still don’t. Considering all the trauma she’s been through, Davidtz’s handling of everything emotionally is somewhat unimpressive. You would think she would be more closed off, scared, and emotionally unavailable. For as big of a role as she had, she didn’t do nearly as much as she needed to. Basically, she hasn’t been able to live freely or have a relationship because she’s been in constant fear of Azazel, so why doesn’t she act like it? She’s missed out on her entire life! Shouldn’t she be a little bit more into it? The character was underwritten as well. I get that Gretta is vital to the story, and for Hobbes, but we don’t know her very well at all. Everything we are told is about her father. What about her family? How did they react after Robert’s death? More importantly, how did she react? All we know is that she knows her father is innocent, and she knows all there is to know about Azazel. What about her though? What are the measures she took to counteract the demon since her father passed? Has she been planning to get revenge, or has she decided to live in hiding?

We get ideas for both, but nothing is explicitly said when it needs to be for me to care about her personally. If anything, Gretta’s lack of help to the situation frustrated me more and more as time went on. Sure, she’s sympathetic to Hobbes’s struggle, and she seems nice, but since she’s the only person that can help him, her lack of support starts to irk you. Can’t you offer anything? When she reveals a decent amount of information to Hobbes, he wonders aloud if she’s been preparing for this battle with Azazel. She indirectly confirms this, but is she really that ready? She was useless in the finale! You would think she could offer some sort of help because everything is about to reach a boiling point, and it’s now or never. Maybe, she would even want to help fight Azazel to finally overcome this personal hell she’s been in all her life. It would rectify everything! Instead, she decides against it and just accepts they can’t win. I guess we gave her too much credit from the get-go. She’s a weaker-minded character than I thought.

I’ll tell you what though, if Denzel Washington lit a fire under my ass to help, I’d be on the front lines with him! This I can guarantee.

Considering Azazel doesn’t even remember her, this should be enough fuel for her to want to fight. This thing has ruined her entire life from childhood on, and he doesn’t even care to remember her. This is evidenced in a scene where Azazel possesses some random guy who corners her on a street and wonders about her association with Hobbes. Now, there’s two things that bother me about this scene. Why can’t he touch her like he does everyone else in the city? All it takes is a simple touch, and it’s established he can possess anyone. For some reason though, he asks her for a handshake. Following her refusal, he just accepts this. Why? This never stopped him before. At most, all he needed to do was tap her elbow! You may counteract with the fact that she’s too good of a person and can’t be possessed, much like Hobbes was in the opening of the film, but tell me how Hobbes was able to be possessed anyway during the climax? They’re going against their own written rules! Am I wrong here?

As I said earlier, Gretta was quoted as saying there are a network of people who believe in the same stuff as her, so why don’t we ever meet them? Are they planning a revenge attack, or do they just meet every once in a while, to talk about how they’re not going to do anything? What’s the point of bringing up this network of people if they didn’t plan on doing anything with it? If they had allies, wouldn’t Gretta want to include them to help Hobbes? Wouldn’t he want to speak with them for advice? This is the closest they’ve ever been to beating the demon responsible for her father’s death! Wouldn’t this inspire Gretta to think of any and all options to help Hobbes, especially if she’s aware of a group of people who deal with this problem directly? Once again, they tease us with these large-scale ideas but never deliver, deciding to keep it small and underwhelming by the time the end comes around.

As you can see, avoiding the large-scale stuff works in some ways but in others, it’s desperately needed, especially when you introduce such a major story element and refuse to have a payoff to it when it would solve everything.

Among other frustrating moments, I don’t understand Stanton. One minute he’s everyone’s favorite lieutenant and the other, he’s either being a dick to Hobbes or offering very little help to anyone’s case. They tease that Stanton knows more than he leads on, but this angle seems to be totally dropped in the second half of the film, making me wonder what the point of him being there actually was. As soon as Robert Milano’s name is brought up, he visibly changes his expression and doesn’t want to hear anything about it. After they miraculously find Hobbes’s prints at one of the murder scenes, Hobbes explains to him that this is exactly what happened to Milano. Despite Stanton asking for his theory, now he doesn’t want to hear it because Milano is involved. Why is this? What is his problem with Milano? Is he a part of the conspiracy that involved the mayor, the governor, and the chief of police? Was he a part of the cover-up? What is his issue with Milano, and why does he turn down any idea suggesting the man? It must lead to something bigger right? I don’t know. They never address it. After Azazel possesses some random guy in the street to force Hobbes into a shootout, Stanton immediately blames Hobbes for shooting an innocent man even though…

1. The possessed man broke into a car to steal a gun and fired at Hobbes first.
2. All of this is corroborated by witnesses on the street.

It’s clear as day that this wouldn’t hold up in a court of law, so what the actual fuck is his problem? Who gives a fuck if the guy was a schoolteacher with a pregnant wife? Even though this man was possessed by a demon, to everyone else, he broke into a car, stole a gun, and shot at a cop. This is an open and shut case. If anything, it was a horrid plan on Azazel’s part because Hobbs (in a realistic situation) wouldn’t have gotten fired. However, he gets fired anyway, and I have no idea why. The man even had “APO” written on his chest. Clearly, Hobbes didn’t shoot the man in front of witnesses and write something on the guy’s chest, so why the hell wouldn’t Stanton trust him in this situation? There’s not a single bit of evidence pointing to Hobbes being a cold-blooded murderer. Everything points to him telling the truth. In real life, he’s got a wrongful termination suit waiting to happen. We never find out what Stanton’s involvement or personal issue is, and it’s a massive hole in this screenplay, considering how much he’s in the movie. The shootout was a pivotal scene though. Not only was it the most action in the film that we get up until that point, but it also shows us how fucked Hobbes is. Azazel can do this any day of the week if he wants to, but we know Hobbes can’t go around killing people Schwarzenegger-style. That won’t solve shit. He has to strategize and outsmart him. It’s the only way, and despite being a fan of action movies, I liked this change of pace because it showed us that you can’t just kick everyone’s ass and leave.

Weird concept.

We aim high with Fallen, but it doesn’t reach the heights we wanted. Despite the amount of criticism I have, I was still entertained throughout a good portion of the running time. Watching Denzel Washington shout Aramaic with the utmost sincerity was unintentionally hilarious, as was the sequence where Azazel possesses a kid name Toby and a chase ensues, with us fully expecting Denzel to hand this kid an ass-whooping. Part of me wish it did happen because that would’ve put this movie on a whole different level of entertainment. Personally, I’m imagining that scene in Bad Santa where Billy Bob Thornton beats up all those kids, but here it would be Denzel versus one kid, and it would’ve been amazing. Another bit of small enjoyment came from the low-key heartfelt conversation between Jones and Hobbes at the department, discussing the point of life. Jones comes up with the very interesting theory that maybe once you figure it out, you die, or you “get promoted” (go to Heaven). At first it didn’t feel like it fit, but what it did was make Hobbes’s mission seem worth it. It was almost as if he saw what he had to do and accepted this mission because it may be the purpose of his life.

Then again, it was thrown in the trash anyway because of the ending, but you get my point.

Fallen goes for the gold with its intriguing concept and blending of genres. Unfortunately, it may have to settle for bronze.