after having had the VCD for several weeks. It's been way too hot to venture out of my bedroom (the one room cooled by my small window air-conditioning unit), and watching TV or VCR has been impossible. So when I ended up spending the evening in bed with a migraine, it finally occurred to me that I could drag my laptop into the bedroom and watch a VCD on it (my desktop computer is Win95 and doesn't support the DivX program).
As everyone had warned me, what a great movie! It was perfect for a semi-invalid--engrossing enough to take my mind off my ailment, but not so convoluted that I couldn't follow it with a fever. Everyone was perfectly cast, with the possible exception of Virginia Madsen (whose part was so simplistic that nearly anyone could have played it): Christopher Walken as the angel Gabriel, who has a score to settle with humanity; Eric Stoltz as angel Simon, not unsympathetic to Gabriel's quarrel but now having only his duty to his god to sustain him; Elias Koteas as Thomas Daggett, once nearly a priest and now a cop who must both find his faith again and stop Gabriel from destroying more souls; and most especially Viggo Mortensen as Lucifer--the coolest, baddest, most beautiful angel of all.
These could all have been stereotypes in the hands of lesser actors, but they're not. Christopher Walken, who is capable of both understatement and the most incredibly OTT acting, delivers a performance that absolutely walks the line it must in being larger-than-life (he *is* an angel, and a powerful one--not some human villain) but not cartoonish. Eric Stoltz is heroic and tragic and loyal, and imbues the character with so much sympathy for all sides of the struggle that you can feel his pain in even the briefest of scenes. Elias Koteas has a role that's been done to death--he was literally about to be anointed a priest when he left the church (literally, and possibly figuratively as well) and he's now a worldly-wise cop who has to solve the case of several strange deaths that seem to be mysteriously linked to him. Viggo has the least time on-screen of any of them, and makes the greatest impact as Lucifer, truly the son of the morning in his beauty and charm. He shows us how he is far greater than the angel Gabriel, and has no quarrel with humanity, but in fact *needs* humanity. Easy to see why he was most beloved...
Today it's finally cooler and I can go into the living room tonight--I think I'll take the opportunity to watch "The Prophecy" on the DVD player instead of the barely-adequate old laptop screen!
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