Fallen
It's the greatest actor of all time versus a fucking demon!
Four straight Fridays, four straight Denzel Washington movies. Welcome to DENZEMBER, a month-long celebration of the greatest actor who’s ever lived.
Directed By: Gregory Hoblit
Other Notable Films From Hoblit: Primal Fear, Hart’s War, Fracture
Starring: Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland
Screenplay By: Nicholas Kazan
Movie Synopsis: A detective has to figure out how to catch a prolific serial killer who turns out to be a demonic spirit.
Signature Line: “Tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime is on my side, yes it is.”
THE INTRODUCTION
An accounting of time, and people, and context
I’m going to ask you to consider something in just a moment. Before I do that, though, please know these two things:
Fallen is about a Philadelphia detective named John Hobbes who finds himself at war with a formless demon named Azazel who can jump in and out of humans simply by touch.
Azazel, for reasons unexplained, taunts Hobbes throughout the movie by singing “Time Is On My Side” by The Rolling Stones.
Okay, now that you know those two things, consider this:
The final showdown in Fallen takes place at a remote cabin deep in the woods, where Hobbes’s partner, Jonesy, attempts to hunt him down (he’s possessed by Azazel at the time). As Jonesy chases Hobbes around, he sings the hook from “Time Is On My Side.” This time, though, Azazel adds an extra piece. After making his way through the chorus, he calls out to Hobbes, asking, “You like the Stones, Hobbes? I bet you didn’t, you big Monkee-fan, pussy.”
The line is a reference to how fans of The Rolling Stones and fans of The Monkees were at odds with each other in the ‘60s. And I point it out right now because I love the implication tucked inside it, which is:
Azazel following up his query about whether or not Hobbes likes The Rolling Stones by saying “I bet you didn’t, you big Monkee-fan, pussy” means that Azazel was not only aware of the fanbases dueling with one another, but also that he chose a side. He had a preference in the situation. He’d listened to enough music from both bands to know he liked one and didn’t like the other. And that means that a thousands-of-years-old fallen angel who had DIRECT CONTACT WITH LITERAL GOD AND LITERAL SATAN spent a not insignificant amount of his time on Earth consuming popular culture.
An actual divine entity did that.
And that’s very important to me because it makes me feel less bad about having watched Fallen, a completely ridiculous movie, more than half a dozen times in my life.
THE VIEWING
A timestamped rewatch of Fallen
1:08: Let’s lay bare the twist of Fallen, because Fallen is the rare surprise-ending thriller that’s more enjoyable on the rewatch when you know what’s going on. So:
All throughout Fallen, a noir-style voiceover relays Detective Hobbes’s thoughts. That’s how the movie opens, in fact. “I want to tell you about the time I almost died,” we hear Hobbes say over an all-black screen. Then the camera cuts on…
…and we see Hobbes stumbling through a snowy expanse, panicked and desperate.
“I never thought it would happen to me, not at this age,” the voiceover calmly continues. Meanwhile, we watch Hobbes fall to the ground, some undiagnosable issue choking the life out of his body. “Beaten. Outsmarted. How did I get into this fix? How did it all begin? No, no, no. If I go back to the beginning, that’ll take forever. So let’s start more recently.”
And then the movie jumps back in time a week or two, to a night when Hobbes attended the execution of a serial killer.
Now, the first time you watch Fallen, you think to yourself, “Okay, that’s obviously Denzel Washington talking, and Denzel is playing Hobbes, so I’m hearing Hobbes’s thoughts. And at some point near the end of this movie, I’m certain this scene will replay itself, during which we’ll all find out why Hobbes looks like he’s about to dieand also we’ll see how he escapes the situation.”
The twist, though, is that it’s not the regular Hobbes we’re hearing. Instead, it’s the demon Azazel, who possesses Hobbes at the end of the movie. And once that’s clear, you realize that all the voiceovers you heard during Fallen were Azazel talking, not Hobbes. It’s a fun little trick that rewards your rewatches, partly because all the lines take on a new meaning, but also because it becomes very obvious that Denzel tweaked his Hobbes-As-Azazel voice juuuuuuuuust the right amount to make it different enough from his Hobbes-As-Hobbes voice to go unnoticed on your first viewing but become all-caps HOW THE HELL DID I MISS THAT? levels of obvious on the rewatch.
Denzel Washington fucking rules.
1:46: Okay. We jumped back in time a week or two. Denzel Washington is here. He plays John Hobbes, a detective in the Philadelphia police department who ends up in a holy war with an ancient demon. Years ago, I watched an interview Denzel did where he talked about how he turned down the part of Mills in Seven (Brad Pitt’s role) because he thought the script was “too demonic.” He said he immediately regretted the decision after watching Seven because the movie was obviously a masterpiece. I wonder if that thought was rattling around in his brain at all when he read the script for Fallen and decided to do it. I bet it was.
1:50: Donald Sutherland is here. He plays Lieutenant Stanton, Hobbes’s boss. I really enjoy when Donald Sutherland shows up in something. He’s got such an interesting mix of AUTHORITY FIGURE ESSENCE and BAD GUY FACE. It makes him feel like somebody who should be in control, but also like you should never be fully comfortable around him.
3:26: Elias Koteas is here. He plays Edgar Reese, a convicted serial killer who’s about to be executed. (Reese is who Azazel is inside of right now.) Koteas is probably the lowest-level actor ever to get the official GOOD MOVIE “[ACTOR] is here. He plays…” introduction, but he’s just always meant a lot to me ever since he showed up as Casey Jones in the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie back in 1990, and so that’s why he’s receiving preferential treatment here.
3:27: P.S. A fun coincidence: Last week, we covered Training Day, which stars Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke. Immediately before doing Fallen with Denzel, Koteas was in 1997’s Gattaca with Ethan Hawke. Everything’s connected, always.
7:23: Right here’s the first time we see Azazel sing “Time Is On My Side.” (Reese sings it as he gets gas chamber’d to death in front of a room full of witnesses.) (What song would you sing if you were getting executed like this?) (I think I’d go with Juvenile’s “Back That Azz Up.”) (Just full-on tears, sobbing my way through, “You’s a fine motherfucker, won’t you back that ass up…” as the gas gathered around me.)
9:43: James Gandolfini is here. He plays Detective Lou, a co-worker of Hobbes’s who’s a tiny bit leary of Hobbes because he has a reputation for refusing to take bribes or skims. Small as the part is (he’s only in a handful of scenes), Gandolfini is great in this.
9:44: P.S. We gotta get a Gandolfini movie on the calendar soon. What’s the general consensus on The Drop? Because I love that one. He’s awesome in it.
9:45: P.P.S. Ooooooooh, or what about The Last Castle. He’s perfect as the wormy, wormy villain in that one.
10:28: John Goodman is here. He plays Detective Jones, Hobbes’s partner (everyone calls him Jonesy). Goodman is such a fun actor. He’s one of those performers who can get up a shot from anywhere on the court. He can be funny (The Big Lebowski), intimidating (The Gambler), prestige dramatic (Flight), broad (The Flintstones), voice-only iconic (Monsters, Inc.), genre iconic (10 Cloverfield Lane), etc. He can do it all.
13:01: The first time we watch Azazel jump from body to body (which he does via touch), he ends up settling on this guy (“Charlie”) as his new host. If I was a demon who could jump inside anybody, there’s no way I’d end up landing on a guy who looks like this. He looks like he’s about one bad interaction away from carrying an assault rifle into a Walmart.
13:02: P.S. Azazel jumps into something like 30 or 40 different bodies in Fallen. That being the case, anytime he lands in a new host I’m gonna refer to that person as New Azazel just so everything stays clear.
13:41: The first thing we see New Azazel do here is deliver a sandwich to a guy, and when the guy starts complaining about how long the delivery took, New Azazel says, “You know what you’d look like with this sandwich up your ass? Like a fat, stupid fuck with a sandwich up his ass.” 😂😂😂😂 Great line.
13:42: P.S. Remember in The Exorcist when that demon (Pazuzu) started talking shit to the priests and it basically turned into a roast session? Demons are fucking funny, dude. I honestly think that the fact that demons make jokes and angels don’t would be enough to sway me into going down to hell instead of up to heaven when I die. Jokes are just very important to me, is all.
15:26: My favorite subgenre of film is MOVIES WHERE DENZEL WASHINGTON WEARS A PLAIN WHITE T-SHIRT.
15:27: P.S. Hobbes lives with his intellectually-disabled brother (Art) and his nephew (Sam). The guy who plays Art (Gabriel Casseus) is so incredibly sweet, and so incredibly harmless, and so incredibly good-hearted, which is why I knew the first time watching Fallen that he for sure was gonna eventually get killed by Azazel somehow.
16:35: New Azazel killed a man, stuffed him into a bathtub, left a cryptic clue for Hobbes to find, and is currently enjoying a bowl of Corn Flakes before heading out for the day. Yet another entry in the THEY ONLY SHOW PSYCHOS DRINKING MILK IN MOVIES canon that I talked about back in the No Country for Old Men essay.
19:37: Fallen, which flopped at the box office but eventually became a cult classic, is for sure a fun movie to watch and I’m glad that it exists. That being said, every time there’s a part in it where Hobbes is investigating a crime scene or doing something that’s supposed to feel unsettling, I can’t help but wonder what the Denzel version of Seven would’ve looked like. I bet it would’ve been so dope.
19:38: P.S. Just so it’s clear: I love Brad Pitt in Seven. I think he’s perfect in it. I do not wanna replace him. It’s just… I mean… Denzel Washington and David Fincher together? Like… come on.
19:39: P.P.S. The DIRECTORS I WISH DENZEL WOULD’VE WORKED WITH AT LEAST ONCE Podium:
The honorable mention spot goes to Steven Spielberg (Let’s drop Denzel into Jurassic Park and see how those dinosaurs behave when Alonzo Harris is walking around Isla Nublar.)
The bronze medal spot goes to Martin Scorsese (How about this: Shutter Island starring Denzel Washington? Sign me the fuck up.)
The silver medal spot goes to Christopher Nolan (How was he not cast in The Odyssey?????? Did we lose out on that because he was in Gladiator II????)
And the gold medal spot goes to David Fincher (Obviously.)
23:12: The clue New Azazel left for Hobbes led to Hobbes learning about a former cop named Milano who killed himself in a remote cabin a couple decades prior, eight months after winning a prestigious Cop of the Year award. Stanton, who was on the force with Milano, tells Hobbes: “Look, do all of us a favor, okay? Whatever you find out, keep it to yourself.” That’s what I said to the Apple Genius lady when she said she was “gonna poke around” inside my iPhone after it became unresponsive.
29:30: Hobbes was able to find Milano’s daughter (Gretta, played by Miss Honey from Matilda). She gives him a few more details about her father’s suicide. According to Gretta, her father captured a serial killer and then a copycat killer surfaced afterward (which is exactly what Hobbes is in the middle of experiencing). Eventually, her father fell under investigation as evidence mounted that he was the copycat killer. She believes he killed himself because, despite the fact that he was innocent of the charges, he felt the evidence against him was of such overwhelming weight that it would unquestionably lead to his conviction.
32:04: Azazel’s got a new host. It’s this gentleman here, who Old Azazel bumped into while exiting a train. And I just wanna mention: If we’re to assume that this is all happening in Philadelphia during January of 1998 (which is when Fallen was released), that means Allen Iverson was on the Sixers already. Why not go jump inside of him instead of just some random dudes? If you do that, you get to be (a) the reigning Rookie of the Year; (b) a handsome multimillionaire; (c) able to dunk a basketball on a regulation goal; and (d) friends with Jerry Stackhouse and Jim Jackson. That all sounds way better than being whoever this schmo is.
34:45: New Azazel showed up to Old Azazel’s apartment, killed him, stuffed him into the tub just like the last guy, left another cryptic clue for Hobbes, and then made himself a bowl of Corn Flakes. I wonder if the Corn Flakes people were pumped about the free publicity or bothered by it?
34:46: P.S. What cereal would be the funniest to find out that demons were super into? Several years ago, there was a Tim Duncan-branded cereal sold in San Antonio. (They were called Slam Duncan O’s, and they were fucking awful.) I would love to find out that Slam Duncan O’s were the preferred cereal of demons in the greater San Antonio area.
37:14: A linguist listened to audio of some apparent gibberish that Reese (the serial killer from the beginning of the movie) was speaking before he was executed. He determined that it’s an ancient language called Syrian Aramaic. Any time someone in a movie speaks a language that hasn’t been spoken in a thousand years or whatever, it’s always cool. An A+ move, creepy every single time. It should be in every movie.
42:22: We get a tiny amount of Hobbes playing basketball with his nephew right here. Incidentally, just a few months after wrapping production on Fallen, Denzel began filming Spike Lee’s wonderful basketball movie, He Got Game. I’m excited for next year when I rig the voting to guarantee that we cover He Got Game for one of the weeks in DENZEMBER.
43:35: Hobbes and Jonesy just learned that the fingerprints they found at the first murder belong to a guy who was just killed in exactly the same way as the first victim. (None of these details matter. Don’t worry about trying to follow them.) As they talk through the confounding nature of all the interconnected murders and evidence, Jonesy says, “Someone’s playing with my dick, and it ain’t me.” The only reason I’d ever wanna be a cop or detective or whatever would be to say stuff like that. That’s the only job you can have where it makes sense. You can’t be, like, a radiation oncologist assessing someone’s x-rays talking about, “Someone’s playing with my dick, and it ain’t me.”
45:35: Hobbes is investigating the cabin where Milano shot himself in hopes of finding something—anything—that might nudge him toward some answers about all the recent murders appearing to be tangled with Milano’s death. Hobbes using a flashlight during the day is very funny to me. He REALLY wanted to see what was going on.
49:26: I was gonna write out a thing on this section of the movie where Hobbes investigates the basement of the cabin, but let’s just do it for this week’s FOOTNOTES because there’s an important part in it that I need you to see:
56:20: See the cat in the window? Azazel’s inside her now. He just popped into a cat for fun.
56:21: P.S. I wonder what the full rules are for what kinds of beings Azazel can possess. Like, we know that he’s able to get inside humans and cats, because we watch him do exactly that. But, like, are all animals on the table? Could he jump into a pig if he wanted to? A snake? A hawk? What about insects? Or plants? Could he be an evil tree? Oh my God, is that what that one Harry Potter movie was about????
57:16: Azazel, who has given up all pretense, is now openly mocking Hobbes in his place of work by singing “Time Is On My Side” at him via the bodies of several people at the police precinct. (He jumps from person to person, each new body picking up a line from “Time Is On My Side” where the last person left off.) This shit is like Demon Karaoke.
57:17: Oh, I haven’t mentioned this yet, so let me say it here: See how this shot is all distorted and off-color? That’s the effect that Hoblit uses to let us know we’re seeing Azazel’s POV. I imagine the world looks the same way through Aaron Rodgers’s eyes.
1:02:23: Hobbes is now certain that the “Azazel” he read about via the books he found in the cabin is the spirit who’s haunting(?) him, so he goes to see Gretta again. Turns out, she knows exactly what’s been going on and has been keeping Hobbes in the dark because she didn’t want him to fall into the invisible world of angels and demons. Here’s what she says to him: “There are certain… phenomena which can only be explained if there is a God, and if there are angels. And there are. They exist.” Coincidentally, that’s the same thing I said to Larami after the Spurs won the chance to draft Victor Wembanyama in the 2023 NBA Draft Lottery.
1:03:41: Gretta lays everything out as plainly as she can: She says there are fallen angels who roam the Earth as spirits, and they can only live if they’re inhabiting a body. Gretta says they jump inside bodies and commit all sorts of acts of atrocity as revenge for having been kicked out of Heaven. She also says that God chose a handful of humans to fight the demons, of which she is one (and Hobbes may be, too).
1:11:43: Turns out, Azazel has been leaving little bits of evidence that implicate Hobbes at all the murder scenes just like he did when he was tormenting Milano all those years ago. I’m not sure if running back the same playbook makes Azazel an efficient demon or a lazy demon. I need John Hollinger to come up with some sort advanced analytic to help me out here. (DER, Demon Efficiency Rating, probably.1)
1:11:44: P.S. The next time I’m late on turning something in, I’m just gonna tell Hannah that it was because I was possessed by Azazel. “Sorry about this coming in after deadline, Hannah. Azazel made me spend two days watching Ginuwine videos on YouTube when I was supposed to have been writing.”
1:15:01: Oh no. Azazel jumped inside Hobbes’s nephew and punched his intellectually-disabled father in the face. Shit is really starting to go sideways now.
1:15:09: Gah. Now Azazel is inside this kid. I was good with Azazel jumping into adults and cats (because adults and cats both deserve to get possessed by demons, on account of how terrible they are), but now he’s targeting children. That’s a bridge too far.
1:16:39: Azazel jumped out of that other kid and into this guy. Which means…
1:18:54: …Aaaaaaaaaaaaand Hobbes just murdered the guy. Worse still: As soon as he did, Azazel floated out of the dead guy and into a woman nearby, then resumed his taunting of Hobbes. Poor Hobbes. This is the most outmatched a Denzel Washington character has ever been in a movie fight.
1:18:55: P.S. The DENZEL WASHINGTON’S MOST POWERFUL MOVIE ENEMIES podium:
The honorable mention spot goes to the ultra powerful law firm he was up against in Philadelphia
The bronze medal spot goes to when he had to fight a literal manifestation of the internet in Virtuosity
The silver medal spot goes to the entrenched racism in Remember the Titans
And the gold medal spot goes to this movie here, where he’s up against an actual demon
1:26:37: Gretta and Hobbes debrief after he killed that guy (who, just for fun, ended up being a newly married school teacher with a pregnant wife). Two things to mention here:
Hobbes and Gretta had hoped that killing Azazel’s host would’ve killed him, too. (They should’ve known it wasn’t going to work, seeing as how this all started for Hobbes after Reese was executed.) They figured out via some more of Gretta’s father’s books that Azazel can survive and travel about 1/6th of a mile after his host dies. (This movie is so funny because they’ll just throw some wild shit at you about a demon spirit only being able to travel 1/6th of a mile and expect you to be like, “Okay, cool. Got it.”)
Hobbes has zero guilt about shooting the guy. He very casually says to Gretta, “You know, after I shot the teacher, Azazel moved to someone else. … Positive. After death. Yeah, I saw it. ” It’s hilarious. He’s talking about ruining the lives of at least one woman and one unborn child with the same level of concern you’d have if you were talking about losing a pen.
1:30:43: …Aaaaaaaaaaaaand Hobbes’s brother is dead. What a fucking bummer this is. I’m so mad at all of y’all for picking this movie as our Christmas-week movie instead of The Preacher’s Wife. Do you know how many intellectually disabled people get murdered by a demon in The Preacher’s Wife? ZERO, you sons of bitches.
1:35:13: …Aaaaaaaaaaaaand Hobbes is officially on the run now. (The screenshot above is him punching a cop in the mouth, lol.) He’s wanted in connection with all the murders he’s been investigating, plus he’s under investigation for the teacher’s murder and the primary suspect in his brother’s murder. Azazel has turned his life into a full-on mess.
1:39:46: Hobbes has come up with a plan to defeat Azazel, but first he needs to make arrangements for Sam (his nephew). His solution: Give him to Gretta so she can take Sam somewhere to hide. A thing I didn’t realize until this particular rewatch: Gretta says earlier that she believes she’s one of the people God has chosen to fight the demons on Earth. She believes that’s her one true purpose in life. And yet, as soon as Hobbes tells her that he’s gonna lure Azazel to a remote location for a one-on-one showdown, she’s like, “Ehhhhhhhhh, good luck, my friend.” She legit did not try one single percent to help him try to kill Azazel. She wanted no part of the battle. 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂
1:43:20: As Hobbes was saying goodbye to Sam, Sam intuited that wherever his uncle was going, he was never gonna see him again. He looked at Hobbes with his puppy-dog eyes and then, in a sad, soft, desperate plea, said, “I’m gonna go back to sleep, and when I wake up, everything’s gonna go back to just the way it was.” I said the same exact thing in the same exact way the night that Tim Duncan announced his retirement. 😞😞😞
1:46:07: Okay, so here’s Hobbes’s 6-step plan for killing an evil spirit that has roamed the Earth for thousands of years:
Step 1: Hobbes will head out to the remote cabin where Milano shot himself.
Step 2: Hobbes will leak just enough information to the detectives at his precinct for Azazel to figure out where Hobbes has gone, thus luring New Azazel to the cabin.
Step 3: Hobbes will shoot New Azazel in the stomach, thus wounding his host body enough to guarantee it won’t be able to escape.
Step 4: Hobbes will smoke a poison-laced cigarette that will kill him in a matter of minutes.
Step 5: Hobbes will then shoot New Azazel in the forehead, killing the host body and forcing Azazel into Hobbes’s poisoned body.
Step 6: Hobbes will die from the poison cigarette, thus killing Azazel, who will wither away into nothingness because he doesn’t have another nearby body to inhabit. (Like Draymond Green without Steph Curry.)
It’s a good plan and a smart plan and an effective plan. But there’s one piece of it that I have a question about. I don’t wanna talk about it yet, though. I’ll go over it when we get to it. In the meantime…
1:49:19: Stanton just showed up at the cabin. He says he’s there to arrest Hobbes and bring him in. Two things to mention:
The above expression is the signature Sutherland Look™. He does it at least once in every single movie he’s in. It’s perfect. It’s like his version of Dirk Nowitzki’s one-legged fadeaway. There’s no defense for it. Whenever he pulls it out, he instantly assumes the upper hand in whatever conversation he’s having.
Hobbes was hoping that Azazel would show up in the body of someone he didn’t know (which would’ve made it easier to shoot—and ultimately kill—that person). But he came as Stanton. Which sucks a ton. But at least it’s not Jone—
1:51:01: Ah fuck. Jonesy’s here, too. Not only does Hobbes not know which guy Azazel’s inside of, but he also knows that, either way, everybody standing there has gotta die for Azazel to be defeated. What a shitty situation. Look at poor Hobbes:
That’s a great face from Denzel. I genuinely think this movie would be a total disaster with anybody else but Denzel in the lead role. He’s the only person cool enough and talented enough to take a premise as outlandish as this and turn it into something that has real merit.
1:52:25: …Aaaaaaaaaaaaand Stanton is dead. Jonesy just killed him. Azazel’s in Jonesy. Jonesy is the New Azazel.
1:52:26: P.S. The entire reason that you cast Donald Sutherland in the Stanton role is because his aforementioned BAD GUY FACE is meant to serve as a sike-out to make you think he’s the one Azazel would be inhabiting right here. And the entire reason you cast John Goodman in the Jonesy role is because his GOOD GUY FACE is meant to serve as surprise, bitch! when it turns out that Azazel is inside him rather than Stanton. Which is why I actually wish they would’ve went the opposite direction with it. Everybody watching this scene play out at this point in the movie was like, “Well, obviously Jonesy is gonna be Azazel.” If Stanton would’ve shot Jonesy there, I think it would’ve been 80 percent more surprising.
1:53:13: Right now’s the part I mentioned in the intro where Jonesy is singing “Time Is On My Side” at Hobbes. Look at Goodman doing his Mick Jagger lips, lol.
1:53:14: P.S. To extend the point I made in the introduction about Azazel consuming pop culture stuff: Azazel makes it out of this movie alive. That means he’s still out there, roaming around, watching movies and reading books and listening to music and shit. And that means there’s a greater-than-zero chance he’s a subscriber to GOOD MOVIE. In which case: What’s up, Azazel? I hope your day’s going well. Big fan of your work.
1:54:14: P.P.S. I bet Azazel fucking loved Sinners.
1:55:10: Okay Hobbes is currently on Step 4 of his 6-step plan for killing an evil spirit that has roamed the Earth for thousands of years. He went out to the remote cabin (✅), lured Azazel there (✅), shot Azazel’s host body in the stomach so Azazel couldn’t escape (✅), and is now smoking his poison suicide cigarette. And that brings us to the question I mentioned earlier, which is:
Does Hobbes really need to kill himself for it to work? Because I don’t think he does. I mean, I get why he would want to, on account of his brother having been murdered, and how he’ll almost certainly get charged in connection with the deaths of Stanton and Jonesy, and also how he’s been framed for the other murders he was investigating. But I don’t think it’s really, actually, truly necessary. Because here’s the thing:
The most important part of the plan is that Azazel be stranded without a body to jump inside of, right? That’s how you kill him. You don’t specifically need to die yourself. And Azazel can only travel up to 1/6th of a mile in his spirit form before deteriorating into nothing. So what you could do is keep the beginning of the plan the same, but then rather than smoking the suicide cigarette, you could just shoot Jonesy another time or two in the stomach and/or chest, thus guaranteeing his eventual death. And right after you shoot Jonesy those additional times, you could just get in your car and haul ass out of there before Azazel’s host body dies. It would lead to the exact same result. Azazel would’ve been stranded AND ALSO Hobbes would’ve gotten to stay alive.
1:58:23: Welp. Jonesy’s dead. Hobbes just shot him in the forehead. Azazel’s about to jump inside Hobbes for the first time. Which brings us all the way back around to the scene from the beginning of the movie where an Azazel-possessed Hobbes is stumbling through the snowy woods as the poison destroys his body.
1:59:15: “So, like I said at the start: I was beaten. Outsmarted. Poisoned. By detective John Hobbes. Can you imagine what it feels like to be alive for thousands of years and realize you’re actually going to die ‘cause some self-righteous cop decided he was going to save the fucking world?” What a fun time this movie is. Let’s go ahead and finish it the only way it could be finished, which is to say in the silliest, goofiest, most YOU GOTTA BE FUCKING KIDDING ME way possible…
1:59:40: WITH AZAZEL ESCAPING DEATH BY JUMPING INSIDE OF A FUCKING CAT THAT WAS LIVING UNDER THE CABIN, lolololol.
2:00:42: “Oooooh, you forgot something, didn’t you? At the beginning I said I was going to tell you about the time I almost died. See ya around.” 😂😂😂😂😂 God, I love this movie.
2:01:20: The movie’s over. Good movie.
UNEXPECTED SIMILARITIES
Things that the most recent movie we covered (Training Day) has in common with this week’s movie
In both movies, Denzel plays a detective.
In both movies, Denzel’s character is up against a force more powerful than him. (A demon in Fallen, and the Russian mob in Training Day.)
In both movies, Denzel’s character smokes a cigarette at the end of the movie.
Both movies have scenes where Denzel’s character kills someone by shooting them in the chest.
Both movies have scenes where a kid watches cartoons.
Both movies have scenes where Denzel’s character has a meaningful conversation with a child on a couch.
Both movies have scenes where Denzel’s character gets pitted against his white partner on the force.
THE EXIT LIST
One final list
Denzel Movies I’m Already Thinking About for Next Year’s DENZEMBER
American Gangster
The Pelican Brief
Philadelphia
Crimson Tide
Ricochet
Virtuosity
He Got Game
The Hurricane
John Q.
Out of Time
Malcolm X
Deja Vu
Unstoppable
Flight
The Equalizer
Next week’s movie is… A Knight’s Tale
You can stream it on Hulu.
This essay was edited by Hannah Giorgis Yohannes. The FOOTNOTES video was produced by Richie Bozek.
This joke is only gonna be funny to, like, four people.
One of my favorite things about GOOD Movie (of which there are many) is how even if it’s about a movie I don’t personally like, reading Shea’s enthusiasm for it makes me appreciate the film more.
“I imagine the world looks the same way through Aaron Rodgers’s eyes” 🤣🤣🤣🤣