ulrick
Joined Aug 2005
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ulrick's rating
This movie is a low budget made-for-TV movie produced by the Canadian movie networks. I've seen it commercial-free on The Movie Network, but it nevertheless had regular fade-to-blacks intended for commercial breaks.
It is a generic movie of the week designed for woman cable channels, without any discernible effort or deviation from the formula. You probably have already seen this story a dozen times on cable.
Sara is a beautiful and single novelist who lives an ideal life in an ideal television small town. A murder happens and she becomes the prime suspect. As per formula, the Sara will try to solve the mystery, and will be lightly threatened by someone who wants her off their track.
Sara will of course struggle to convince the good looking and well meaning policeman who's investigating the case that she's in danger and being framed.
As you must know from the formula, the actual murderer will turn out to be either a friend, the other woman, or the policeman, and you do not really get the clues to solve this mystery. It just sort of happens.
Everything is per formula. Everyone is middle class, single, beautiful, and a little stiff. Everything is clean and new. There is no violence or serious conflict, and in this case no romance. This movie will not offend or interest anyone, it is strictly a time filler for cable.
It is a generic movie of the week designed for woman cable channels, without any discernible effort or deviation from the formula. You probably have already seen this story a dozen times on cable.
Sara is a beautiful and single novelist who lives an ideal life in an ideal television small town. A murder happens and she becomes the prime suspect. As per formula, the Sara will try to solve the mystery, and will be lightly threatened by someone who wants her off their track.
Sara will of course struggle to convince the good looking and well meaning policeman who's investigating the case that she's in danger and being framed.
As you must know from the formula, the actual murderer will turn out to be either a friend, the other woman, or the policeman, and you do not really get the clues to solve this mystery. It just sort of happens.
Everything is per formula. Everyone is middle class, single, beautiful, and a little stiff. Everything is clean and new. There is no violence or serious conflict, and in this case no romance. This movie will not offend or interest anyone, it is strictly a time filler for cable.
Gabriel is film featuring breathtaking cinematography and style, a palette of dark and brown colors that help captivates the viewer in its dark underworld populated by dirty, anonymous homeless people, rock clubs, S&M, and squatters. The film is where Goth is at in 2007, post The Crow, post-Matrix, post-many vampire movies including Queen Of The Damn and Underworld, and affordable digital independent film making.
It's the story of Gabriel, arriving to this dark, rainy city, to meet back with the six other archangels who have been fighting, and loosing, against a fallen angel, Sammael.
The film avoids actually referencing hell and heaven, or a specific religion. The antagonists could have been vampires instead of archangels, it is simply a story device. The characters are the classic photogenic, tragic, humorless characters that populates these movies.
The actors are very good, and helps selling this story which walks on a path that has been taken many time, and has often led to corny, preposterous, made-for-television goth movies. Although it is never clear in these films how such extreme world can function, effort have been made in the writing to show the fallen believably enjoying their dark side and giving as well as receiving pain.
Unfortunately, once released from the wonderful atmosphere of the film, we realize that there wasn't that much actually going on here.
While the film utilizes archangels for its characters, it turns out that they fight the fallen angels with fists, guns, and knives. The fallen retaliate with bombs, and guns. There are no magic powers in this film beside healing wounds (which is convenient for action scenes), and there is not an angel wing or divine intervention in sight. It is merely a series of short action scenes as our hero eliminates his enemies one by one.
When entering this world, Gabriel meets Jade, an angel who has become a prostitute and drug addict in the course of only two years. It's a one-dimensional character which ultimately serves no other purpose than to setup a predictable love scene which feels out-of-character for Gabriel. Jade is ultimately a by-the-book character, pretty, and expendable. She may be a viewer proxy for the female goth audience.
Overall, the film has a thick and effective atmosphere created with a gorgeous cinematography, tasteful use of effects, but ultimately delivers little more than a series of murders in a fight between two idealism that are never explained. Two sequels are apparently in the works.
It's the story of Gabriel, arriving to this dark, rainy city, to meet back with the six other archangels who have been fighting, and loosing, against a fallen angel, Sammael.
The film avoids actually referencing hell and heaven, or a specific religion. The antagonists could have been vampires instead of archangels, it is simply a story device. The characters are the classic photogenic, tragic, humorless characters that populates these movies.
The actors are very good, and helps selling this story which walks on a path that has been taken many time, and has often led to corny, preposterous, made-for-television goth movies. Although it is never clear in these films how such extreme world can function, effort have been made in the writing to show the fallen believably enjoying their dark side and giving as well as receiving pain.
Unfortunately, once released from the wonderful atmosphere of the film, we realize that there wasn't that much actually going on here.
While the film utilizes archangels for its characters, it turns out that they fight the fallen angels with fists, guns, and knives. The fallen retaliate with bombs, and guns. There are no magic powers in this film beside healing wounds (which is convenient for action scenes), and there is not an angel wing or divine intervention in sight. It is merely a series of short action scenes as our hero eliminates his enemies one by one.
When entering this world, Gabriel meets Jade, an angel who has become a prostitute and drug addict in the course of only two years. It's a one-dimensional character which ultimately serves no other purpose than to setup a predictable love scene which feels out-of-character for Gabriel. Jade is ultimately a by-the-book character, pretty, and expendable. She may be a viewer proxy for the female goth audience.
Overall, the film has a thick and effective atmosphere created with a gorgeous cinematography, tasteful use of effects, but ultimately delivers little more than a series of murders in a fight between two idealism that are never explained. Two sequels are apparently in the works.
