He’s A Perfectly Normal Boy! Hooptober XI
30/32 - Donald Sutherland 1/1

"Someone's playing with my dick and it ain't me."

I was feeling a bit bummed when I realized I hadn't planned my Hooptober viewing all that well and I was left with only a couple of options on the big day. That all melted away when I dusted off my Warner snap-case DVD of Fallen and spun up Denzel's only straight up genre movie.

On the spectrum of Se7en knockoffs, you could do a lot worse than a competently directed, well-written Denzel vehicle featuring John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, and James Gandolfini (who excels at being a trashy cop). There is a direct correlation between how many critical questions you ask and you're enjoyment of supernatural crime movies—Shocker, Candyman, The Crow, The Devil's Advocate, and many others require you to just go along for the ride.

Fallen's biggest fault is the overly long runtime, if you cut this film down to a tight 1:45, they could have gotten a lot more out of the tension that gets created in fits and starts, and taken better advantage of the dynamic score created by the legendary Tan Dun. The Azazel scene on the street is a perfect example of how this film shines but then it goes back into the precinct and loses all momentum.

Bad* Denzel movies are still better than most anything out there and this movie should be a cult classic, if for no other reason than to get the MAN back into a genre picture.

*this is a trick. There is no bad Denzel movies. The man elevates every film he’s in.