The Prophecy

Yesterday (2-10-08), I watched this movie on IFC (thank you TiVo) for the first time since is saw it in the theater. Twelve years and five months later, all I remembered about it was that it took place in the desert, that Christopher Walken was a supernatural bad guy and Adam Goldberg was a human who had killed himself, but was in limbo servitude to Walken until Walken let him die in peace. The entire rest of the cast, the plot, was a complete blank. Yesterday I discovered why: Christopher Walken's scenes with Adam Goldberg are the only watchable parts of this bad bad movie.
Christopher Walken and Eric Stoltz are Gabriel and Simon, rival angels visiting Earth, on either side of a war over the fate of humanity. Gabriel and Simon are on Earth to recover the soul of the most evil warrior in all humanity, a recently-deceased Army colonel who was responsible for war crimes in Korea. His soul will tip the balance of power and overthrow God, or something like that.
Elias Koteas (Zodiac, The Thin Red Line) is a divinity student who lost his faith and became a detective instead. He stumbles across a dead angel at a crime scene (Kenny Bania from Seinfeld is the coroner) and reads the angel's hand-written, centuries-old Bible, with an extra chapter in the back. He's soon on the trail of the angels to a decaying mining town in the desert. Simon has recovered the soul from the dead colonel, but before he can skip town, Simon has to stash the soul where Gabriel won't find it, kind of like True Romance or any of those "thieves stealing from thieves" movies where there's a briefcase of drugs/cash/whatever. Stoltz gives the Big Kiss to an eleven-year-old Indian girl who attends Virginia Madsen's school. Walken then pursues the girl, while Koteas and Madsen try to come to grips with the divine.

Essentially an overlong X-Files episode, The Prophecy drags badly when Koteas and Madsen are onscreen. By halfway through the movie, my "FF" finger was itching to move the story along. Finally, during the third act showdown, Viggo Mortensen appears as Lucifer. Looking a bit like Aragorn, but with a hairbrush and some eyeliner, Lucifer doesn't want any competition in the eternal damnation department, so he's rooting for good over evil, so he remains relatively evil and maintains his monopoly on lost faith.
I just realized that this movie features three veterans from Pulp Fiction the year before: Christopher Walken, Eric Stoltz, and Amamda Plummer don't share any scenes in Pulp Fiction, but they're all reunited here. Walken has claimed a spot on Entertainment Weekly's list of Biggest Sellout Performances In Hollywood History for movies just like this. EW called him The Least Selective Actor in Hollywood. (North Conway Cinema)