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GABRIEL
(Review)
When a soul crosses to the Afterlife, it journeys into one of two opposing realms:
a divine source of harmony and wellbeing;
a consuming source of evil and malevolence.
A midworld exists for the souls whose judgement has yet to be decided.
It is commonly referred to as Purgatory.
For centuries, 7 Arc Angels, Protectors of the Light, and 7 Fallen, Soldiers of the Dark, have silently fought for balance of power over these unclaimed souls.
Each side is restricted to sending only one warrior in every cycle.
Upon arrival, they must assume a human form.
At present, Darkness rules, and has the strongest grip on the City that it has ever held.
Thus does Shane Abbess’ Gabriel open, a curious hybrid of The Crow and The Matrix, as fleshbound angels and demons wage war in a decrepit, rain-soaked metropolis perpetually shrouded in darkness.
This could have been something magnificent, but as the age-old saying goes, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. (And fittingly enough, the same can be said of the film’s divinities who find themselves trapped in weak, mortal shells.)
The concept is nothing new, of course, the eternal struggle between Light and Dark, warriors who battle for the souls of humanity, unseen and unheralded. And the cinematic influences are all too obvious: the guns and karate chops in a world removed from the real one (thank you, Wachowskis), where most of the action takes place in an urban environment designed with a Gothic-Punk aesthetic (thank you, Alex Proyas).
But the script does succeed in capturing esoteric concepts and ideas usually reserved for written fiction. The manner in which the angels (or Arcs, as they are referred to in the film) refer to the Source, and the Light, feels apt somehow, reverential. Existential, philosophical, and metaphysical matters are also dealt with head-on by the narrative.
The opening title sequence itself, as Gabriel (Andy Whitfield) experiences the sudden trauma of corporeality, is a powerful indicator of the knowledge that informs the film’s script (by Abbess and Matt Hylton Todd, who has a minor role as the Arc Ithuriel).
His now human sensorium floods him with alien stimuli; his voice is no longer a divine sound capable of vast destruction; he can no longer fly. Gabriel writhes in the blasted wasteland which surrounds the City, an entity once shining and luminous, now only meat.
The sequence could have been potent and emotionally wrenching, if only Whitfield had captured the moment. As it is, it plays more like sections from a music video than anything else.
Now, just to set the record straight, Whitfield is not a terrible actor; I’ve seen far worse action leads. Whitfield though, never quite manages to humanize Gabriel, to make him anything more than the self-assured idealist he so clearly is in this urban cesspool.
And in a sense, Whitfield’s lucky, because next to Dwaine Stevenson (who plays baddie Sammael), Whitfield looks like a solid gold Oscar winner. There’s nothing remotely malevolent or intimidating in Stevenson’s performance, save perhaps for some creepy-a$$ contacts, sadly offset by a ridiculous moptop.
Most of the baddies, in fact, don’t really leave much of an impression, save perhaps for Asmodeus (Home and Away‘s Michael Piccirilli), who runs a brothel called the Funhouse.
There’s a little more life over on the Arc’s side, with Harry Pavlidis doing his best bitter Al Pacino as Uriel, though surprisingly, the one performer who brings the greatest amount of genuine emotion to the screen is See No Evil‘s Samantha Noble, who plays Amitiel. Despite her pouty model looks, Noble proves to be the most convincing actor of the bunch.
Situations like this can be frustrating, particularly when the material has some substance and merit to it. The final confrontation between Gabriel and Sammael is the sequence perhaps most compromised by the weak performances, considering the weighty and dramatic conflict that takes place between the two characters.
Aside from the shortcomings of the cast though, what the narrative fails to do is to insert a human element into the story. Focused as we are on the Arcs and their lofty, divine mission fallen by the wayside, we never really get a proper sense of the squalor and misery the City’s unjudged masses must experience as their daily lot.
Yes, we’re told the City has hordes of homeless, and a soup kitchen figures into the plot, but Abbess never puts a face to the suffering. The story never introduces us to any of the struggling masses whose souls are being fought for. As a result, most of the philosophical debates remain in the realm of rhetoric. We never get a true sense of what these angels are suffering for.
We see their suffering, yes, particularly Amitiel’s, whose degradation would be terrible for a human; in an angel’s case, it’s even far more horrific. But the reason for that suffering is never really given a context within the narrative. Abbess is ultimately unsuccessful in making an argument for Amitiel and all the other disillusioned Arcs to return and resume their divine tasks. Why should they fight for a humanity that doesn’t even have a genuine personality?
The sense of souls in the balance (certainly a more weighty proposition than if they were merely fighting for lives) is never distilled by either Abbess or the script into a raw and potent force that the audience can latch onto, giving us that big picture the Arcs are privy to, and the anchor necessary to ground the narrative in an emotional arena.
This is, I feel, the biggest reason why Gabriel’s climax loses some of its punch, since the film never completely elicits the audience’s sympathy for the plight of the City dwellers.
On a more superficial level, the action sequences also, sadly, come up a tad short.
This is certainly not Master Yuen Wo Ping’s Matrix-stylings. This isn’t even Equilibrium/Ultraviolet-level action. The bullets-and-kung fu flourishes just aren’t flashy or well-choreographed enough to qualify as a distinct plus.
Having mentioned Equilibrium and Ultraviolet though, Gabriel feels like it could have benefited tremendously by having the highly visual approach that is Kurt Wimmer’s stock-in-trade. If Wimmer had traded in the weak script of Ultraviolet for the potentially powerful Gabriel script, now that would have been a film to look out for.
Or if Wimmer was unavailable, then Nochnoy Dozor‘s (Night Watch) Timur Bekmambetov would have been great too, a director who could just go apesh!t with the movie’s look and attitude.
But that’s all what-if’s and if-only’s, which is a game I try not to indulge in when I write a review. (And no offense meant to Mr. Abbess, but it’s just that there’s so much in the script that you got right, that it’s frustrating the end result didn’t kick me in the a$$ the way it could have.)
All told though, I think I enjoyed this a whole lot more than either God’s Army, or its sequel. Yes, the original had Christopher Walken, as well as Viggo years before he got his visa to Middle Earth, but God’s Army just felt lacking somehow, and I was even less thrilled with its sequel.
In Gabriel, Shane Abbess came within tantalizing eyesight of the angels vs. demons cinematic masterpiece I’ve long been waiting for. But the fact that he came close gives me hope.
Just as Purgatory always exists with the hope, however slim, that Light will fall upon its dimly-lit streets, so can I await the day that Heaven’s Falcons will finally smite demonic a$$ in the full cinematic glory they deserve.
And when that happens, I’ll know that Gabriel helped us get there.
(Gabriel OS courtesy of impawards.com [BE Design].)
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