Fallen (1998)

John Goodman and Denzel Washington

Going back to a Denzel Washington movie for this one. It was made by Gregory Hoblit, who has directed some pretty decent movies like Frequency and Primal Fear. Fallen is rated R for language and violence.

Dan -
This is another movie that has been sitting in my Netflix queue for more than a couple of years as it gradually made its way to the top. I worked at a movie theater when this movie was originally released and had seen the last 2 minutes of it more than I can count, but I have never watched it from the beginning. So the bad thing is that I knew how the movie ended, but the good thing was that I still liked the rest of it even when I knew how it ended.

I'll let Mark deal with the plot explanations except to say that Denzel Washington is a detective who has caught, convicted, and seen through the execution serial killer Edgar Reese. The intrigue starts after the execution and he investigates several murders that mimic Reese's crimes.

Be warned that this is a movie filled with supernatural elements. That being said, if you aren't interested in stuff like that which deals with themes of faith, God, evil spirits, etc. you may want to skip this movie. It is well made with some clever cinematography and the fantastic use of The Rolling Stones' music. I can almost guarantee that you will be humming one of their songs when the movie's over. And the last song in particular strikes me as funny especially considering the title of it. Look it up when the movie's over.

This becomes a tough movie to review because you as a reader most likely have not seen this movie, and may not have even heard of it. Adding to that is the fact that I don't want to give anything away. I will only say that there is a lot of point-of-view shots that are distorted to give clues as to what is happening. I am not trying to hype this up as a fantastic movie, so don't get me wrong about that. But I thought it got better as it went along and I had half a smile at how it ended.

I give this movie 3 stars out of 5. Honestly, it's probably a one-timer. If it's on TV, check it out or DVR it. You won't miss anything if it's edited anyway.

Mark -
I have to admit that I’m really not sure yet how I actually feel about this movie. It kept me entertained and I wanted to know what happened next, but at the same time it seemed that as the movie progressed it also digressed. This is the first time I’ve seen this movie, and to be honest I didn’t know anything about it. I love it when I get the opportunity to see a movie I don’t know anything about, but it seems rare that such things happen, because how can you know that you want to watch something if you don’t know that it even exists?

The movie focuses on Detective John Hobbes, played by Denzel Washington. Hobbes has put away an infamous serial killer named Edgar Reese, and witnesses Reese’s execution by lethal injection. The same night as the execution of Reese, Hobbes begins to have reoccurrences of ways that Reese would torment him. Hobbes begins to receive phone calls in the middle of the night in which no one speaks on the other end of the line, and he also begins to hear people singing the same song that Hobbes did right before his execution. As a number of murders begin to pile up around town, it is thought that possibly a copycat murderer is doing the killing. As more and more strange phenomena take place, it seems unlikely that a copycat would be able to have all of the inside information to be able to pull off such accuracy of impersonation. Things start to go from bad to worse for Hobbes as it starts to look like he may be the one committing the murders.

I don’t really want to give away everything in this movie so I’m going to stop my summary part of the movie at that point. I really enjoyed the mystery side of this movie, but there is also a supernatural side of events that somewhat turned me off. I thought the first half of the movie was much better than the second half. I will give it credit for at least having an ending that is an ending, unlike a lot of movies. 3 ½ * out of 5

My Random Thought For Fallen: Hobbes partner, Jonesy, is played by John Goodman and has some great one liners in this movie including, "If it wasn't for pizza and other fine Italian foods, there would be no happiness."