aka Fallen Knight
- Directed by Jean-Marc Piche
- Written by Matt Roe and Ripley Highsmith
- Starring
- Dolph Lundgren
- Francoise Robertson
- Roc Lafortune
- Allen Altman
- Produced by Claudio Castravelli
It’s always struck me as odd that the Knights Templar don’t show up a little more often in pop culture. The mysterious holy order, begun during the Crusades and stomped out a century later, is one of those just plain nifty historical sidetracks. They were the ultimate holy warriors, with their names used for good and ill over the centuries (they were accused of blasphemous heresies by the Papacy and the French king, who wanted their money), and their core rituals are rumored to have been preserved in Freemasonry. There’s a certain charm to the whole idea of the mystical knights, and I can only attribute their almost complete absence from the public eye to a massive Freemasonic coverup; as far as movies go, I can only think of De Ossorio’s Blind Dead movies (evil zombie Templars — very cool) and Warriors of the Wasteland (post-apocalyptic Templars — well, it’s a nifty idea, even if the movie bites green weenies). And yes, you are welcome to use the Comment Board to inform me of the entire Templar cinematic sub-genre of which I’m unaware.
Oddly enough, Dolph Lundgren occupies an analogous boat. Ask the man on the street (or even the man browsing the video store) what he’s been doing for the past ten years, and he’ll probably draw a blank on anything more recent than Masters of the Universe (1987) or, maybe, The Punisher (1989). This despite the fact that, in recent years, Lundgren’s been working more than ever before, starring in three or four direct-to-video features each year.
Somehow, it seems fitting that the forgotten Lundgren and the forgotten Templars should come together in this — a movie that should be forgotten.
The opening should give chills to anyone familiar with less-ambitious cinema: our first block of exposition is given through that hoary cliche, the radio announcer voice-over. In this case, the exposition is an attempt to salve one of the bigger weak points in the movie; see, the announcer makes mention of the fact that it’s December 22nd, 1999, but that due to the greenhouse effect, there are unseasonably warm temperatures gracing the eastern seaboard, thus trying to explain desperately why a movie taking place around Christmas in New York and environs (as played by Montreal) shows nary a trace of snow. Nice try, guys.
Anyway. Beneath our ersatz Big Apple, workmen repairing a sewer pipe fall through the floor into a hidden chamber, complete with Indian artifacts and spooky skeletons. Immediately, they call on the on-call archaeologist, Dr. Karen Goodleaf (Robertson), who’s apparently Native American. (They never bother to make this explicit until the movie’s halfway done, but I thought I’d throw you a bone.)
To Karen’s astonishment, the skeletons in the chamber are dressed in the traditional white tunic and red cross of the Knights Templar. And to my astonishment, what follows is probably the most error-ridden version of archaeology ever to grace my VCR. I really hate to be pedantic about the coming laundry list, but one of the most annoying things in the entire world for me — right up there with the words “Starring Adam Sandler” — are details in movies that are all wrong, even though getting them right wouldn’t have taken any more effort. To wit:
- Karen takes one look at the weave of the Templar’s tunic, and not only does she identify it as being 6th-century (!!), but even identifies it as Irish-made (!!!). Templars in the sixth century? Huh? Any history buff can tell you that the Templars began in the twelfth century along with the Crusades. Forty-five minutes into the movie, someone half-heartedly tries to repair the damage here by stating that, yes, the twelfth-century date is the “common wisdom,” although rumors about that they predate that by more than a thousand years, having been started by St. Peter himself… but sorry, that’s too little too late. And no one even bothers to explain why a mysterious cult in sixth-century Jerusalem would be wearing Irish weave.
- Karen immediately starts examining everything on her own, without taking any pictures in situ. If this seems perfectly reasonable to you, let me remind you that with any archaeological find that spurns the common wisdom, you’re going to want to have as much confirmation and unimpeachable evidence as possible. That means undisturbed photos, and it definitely means that a single junior archaeologist shouldn’t be examining the site alone.
So, while performing her half-wit archaeology, Karen discovers a false wax back to one Templar skeleton’s medallion and removes it to uncover an ornate gold key.
Congratulations, we have our McGuffin.
We also have the requisite opposing forces between which Karen can be caught: a weird guttural guy who kills a guard to get into the work site (oh, that must be our bad guy); and Lukas (Lundgren), who is quite obviously a modern Knight Templar (well, duh), who kills the guttural guy with a big, armored, spike-knuckled punch to the back of the head.
Now that we’re a few minutes into the movie, it’s time to start ripping off other movies shamelessly. The main pattern set up here puts feisty Karen in the middle of an ancient conflict (in the vein of movies such as Highlander and Blade). The guttural guy was actually possessed by “the minion,” a servant of Satan who can transfer himself from body to body (ripping off The Fallen), even when the current body is dead. (The question here raise is, how come the Templars couldn’t figure out a better way to off the minion, given the time they’ve had to work on it? I mean, if the minion can still go from dead body to dead body via the eyes, perhaps a better idea would be to restrain or cripple and blind the host. How about it, Dolph?) The minion’s trying to get ahold of the indestructible key, which can unlock the door in the crypt of the Templar stronghold in the valley of Megiddo (outside Jerusalem) and free Satan; the Templars were originally formed to play keepaway with the minion.
All clear? Good.
What takes the place of a plot for the rest of the movie is essentially one big chase, as Lukas and Karen try to figure out how to keep the key away from the minion permanently. As they do this, the minion keeps jumping bodies, giving a half-dozen actors the opportunity to show exactly how bad they are at playing over-the-top demons.
Eventually, Karen comes up with the bright idea of dropping the key into the radioactive waste being stored on the reservation where she grew up. This gives us an incredibly boring detour into Karen’s fears of going home, Lukas’s introduction to the peaceful Indian way of doing things, etc. (Indians, Satanic entities, and hazardous waste? What a brilliant way to rip off both Prophecy (1979) and The Prophecy (1995) at one time.) In the meantime, the minion keeps tracking them, giving him/it a chance to pull off a Terminator-esque police station massacre (not too difficult, given that these officers apparently had the tactical training of your average video game cannon fodder).
And then, just to pad our running time and give us more subplots that go nowhere, we’re also introduced to Detective Roseberry (David Nerman) and Karen’s old teacher, Dr. Schulman (Roc Lafortune), who start following the trail. (Yup, let’s introduce a couple of characters late in the game and see if maybe the audience will care.) Doc Schulman’s not only an archaeologist, but apparently he can do anything at all; later he analyzes autopsy photos, and even performs one himself without batting an eye. Why? Well, they start to notice a strange growth in the brains of all of the minion’s hosts that Lukas dispatches, and worry that there’s actually a brain-mutating epidemic in the works. (That’s right, as if this movie wasn’t unfocused enough, we’re going to add a disease angle here.)
Telling you the plot is just plain depressing — I keep getting the impulse to rewrite and revise it into something more palatable to tell you about — so I’ll just fast-forward to the most incredibly annoying part: After spending an incredibly slow forty minutes getting to the reservation, sneaking into the waste containment facility, fighting it out with the minion, etc., the minion gets ahold of the key anyway, so Lukas and Karen have to jet back to Israel to stop him. That’s right, folks; the entire second act of the movie was a pointless side road. Gaaaaaah…
You notice I’ve complained mostly about the plot here. Just you wait; I haven’t even started on other elements of this movie. To begin with, Lundgren himself. I hear he’s a wonderful person to work with — a prince among men, in fact. That doesn’t change the fact that, at least from what I can see here, his acting ability is minimal and his screen presence just plain doesn’t exist. Thus, all of those supposedly witty scenes between him and Karen have absolutely no chemistry at all. None.
So why does Dolph get hired for these things? For one thing, he’s a respectable martial artist. But again, you couldn’t tell that from watching this movie. The fight scenes are so poorly choreographed that Dolph comes off looking like the Sean Connery version of James Bond could kick his ass. As could Miss Moneypenny, probably.
The possessed hosts all needed to be sat down at once and figure out exactly what this minion’s personality is like; the first guy plays him like The Kurgan, the female cop is just plain comical, the police photographer plays him like a stoic Ah-nuld wanna-be, Doc Schulman (yup, he gets possessed) comes off like Dwight Frye as Renfield, and the final possessed Templar chews the scenery like a late-night spook show host.
And let’s not forget a couple of stunning technical oopsies: In one scene, Lukas disapproves with Karen’s choice of radio stations and turns it off — the problem being that they forgot to add radio station sounds in post-production. And in a similar vein, someone later throws a grenade, and the stunt men dutifully bounce off their springboards — despite the complete lack of either explosion or sound.
Before I degenerate further into nit-pick level bitching, I’ll just tell you my final assessment: If you were trying to find the absolute lamest of the lame crop of millennial thrillers, you’d be getting pretty close by picking this one.
If I were a Templar, I’d be pissed.
Some Notable Totables:
- body count: 34
- breasts: 0
- explosions: 0
- dream sequences: 1
- ominous thunderstorms: 0
- actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0
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