The 2007 Australian film “Gabriel” is based around the idea of the forces of the “light” and the “dark” battling for control of the realm of purgatory. The movie tells of how 7 “arcs” and 7 “fallen” have been sent every so often to attempt to gain control. We are then also told that the titular character of Gabriel is the final arc to be sent from “the light” and that the fallen are pretty much in complete control of purgatory. The important thing to note here is that we are told this, breaking all “show don’t tell” rules and makes for quite a tedious opening, reminiscent of the horrible and lengthy opening of Alone in the dark, a film so bad most critics go into coma’s after watching it.
Gabriel goes on to show the Schwarzenegger style one man army killing all of the fallen, revealing the plot important twist (which is painfully obvious, but due to my creed as a critic to not reveal spoilers so I won’t tell you). The movies itself is very stylish in look, with purgatory being a city in an eternal night, very effectively creating an oppressive atmosphere and a feeling of fear as the world unfolds around the characters. Although one, cannot help but notice that the writers had often learned some set design from the future of the blade runner variety. However the characters themselves are thoroughly undeveloped and Gabriel himself is quite dislikeable, but that is more down to poor direction and writing than bad acting as Andy Whitfield does deliver a fine performance and does emote the character as well as he can.
On top of Andy Whitfield, the casting is pretty hit and misses, Jack Campbell plays a convincing Raphael, who fills the role of old and wise arc very well, but his first line might as well be “My death is an inevitable plot device”. Asmodeus the fallen, who embodies vanity, is played excellently by Michael Piccirilli. He delivers a truly creepy performance and is probably the only character in the film that the audience can empathize with. Not that a demonic pervert is someone to empathize with. However other than those three the casting is astonishingly poor. Sammael is played by Dwaine Stevenson is often hilariously bad delivering some of his lines with random pauses and nonsensical bouts of shouting, it may just be personal preference but when there is a character who is an arch demon or a fallen I personally enjoy a more subtle approach creating a sense that the character is diabolical in nature and that they could actually become incredibly powerful. However, this does not happen Sammaels general appearance immediately shouts “im evil” and every scene involves him getting angry and threatening one of his own, this approach makes him more silly than scary.
Beyond the characters and scenery, the film makes some odd decisions; the musical score is just weird with a lot of the music not really suiting the scene it is being used in. The action scenes are good, creatively filmed and well choreographed, although they are suspiciously similar to scenes from earlier action movies such as the matrix and equilibrium, with the final fight scene being extremely similar to the fight between Iron man and Warmonger at the end of the first Iron Man. Finally the entire film is pretty well shot, with some good cinematography nothing outstanding but nothing really bad either.
Overall, the movie was surprising, the premise was interesting but never really gets to anything more than that, and it acts as nothing more than a backdrop to the fighting and poor attempt at a love story. The problem was that this film had true potential to be great, it can see the gateway to greatness without a telescope but it tries a bit too hard and ends up crashing into the tree of averageness. Gabriel is worth a watch but not worth paying for, if you can rent it or borrow it from that mate, you do not really like but is stupid enough to buy it then borrow it. If you cannot borrow it though do not worry yourself, this movie will not enlighten you, but it will not put you in a coma either.
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