User Reviews

Gary Sinise, who has portrayed Harry Truman and George Wallace in epic movies, gives a restrained but powerful performance here as the son, ignored by his father, who returns to Maine to clear up his deceased father's business in this very thought provoking film.

The picture begins where the Sinise character age 9, is introduced to a young lady, age 4. The girl's father employs Sinise's father as a gardener.

When the 3 go out to give Christmas gifts to hospitalized children, tragedy strikes and the employer never got over the fact that his car killed a woman and her child on a very snowy night. He runs away although the police vindicated him from what had occurred.

When Sinise returns many years later, the girl comes back with her blind adopted daughter. The father also suddenly appears and love blossoms between Sinise and the woman. There are some torrid moments when Sinise reveals to the woman that her father is back in town.

This is a story of tragedy and losing one's direction in life. There is also redemption. It is wonderfully depicted.

Enjoyed the movie very much, but had some reservations: 1-Plot-wise--Why would a father who loved his daughter so much, simply disappear after the car accident in the snow? 2-Joely Richardson (playing Katherine) did OK until the end when she found out that Terry McQuinn (played by Senise) was the boy in her past, and especially after she found out that her dad was still alive. Her reaction was not strong enough (not enough emotion)! The makeup scene at the end over the phone was not especially credible.

3-Gary Senise, with his trademark look, was pretty stone-faced, but that did not detract from the movie because it sort of fit in well with his dad, who had a pretty cold personality.

4-The acting by Jordy Benattar (as Olivia), Dave Nichols (as Charles Wentworth), and Gordon Pinsent (as Warren Wentworth) was very good!

The meaning of the title "Fallen Angel" is not apparent until about halfway through the film. I will discuss it below, after the "SPOILERS" warning. Sinise plays a very successful attorney in L.A., leaving Maine after his graduation because he and dad were not close, and he wanted "to become more" than caretaker of vacation cottages in Maine. He comes back upon news that his dad is ill. A key element of the story is being reunited with a girl he had not seen in 30 years.

SPOILERS follow, read further at your own risk. As a boy, he had been in a car that accidentally killed a mom and child in the winter, the shocked dad went off into the woods, was written off as dead, the 9-year-old boy was in the back seat comforting the 4-year-old daughter. When he returned as an adult, the grown girl coincidentally was arranging to spend Christmas in the cottage, they reunited but she had no memory of the early childhood. Her dad was not dead, he was a street person, in the winter they would go into parking garages and partially lay on warm hoods of cars, and looked like 'fallen angels', thus the name of the movie. Eventually the daughter and dad were reunited, and the two grown kids fall in love. Just a sweet, typical Hallmark movie where everything turns out for the better.

I watched Fallen Angel today this was the second time I've seen it and it's a heartwarming Christmas tale about a man who comes home and his life changes forever. Gary Sinise, delivered another top notch performance as done in his other films such as Apollo 13, Forrest Gump and many more Joely Richardson also gave a touching performance as her young co star Jordy Benattar who shined as the young blind girl.

Terry McQuinn (Sinise) a successful businessman finds himself returning to his hometown of Maine after his father dies staying only long enough to clear out his home and settle private affairs. As a child Terry (Brockman) and his dad didn't spend much time together one day he meets the Wentworth family including their four year old daughter Katherine (Simpkins) after a Christmas visit to the hospital one night there's a car accident both a mother and daughter are killed and Katherine's father Charles (Roberts) suddenly disappears leaving his daughter and Terry alone.

Fast forward to nearly 30 years later and Terry is reunited with Katherine (Richardson) whose also spending Christmas at a cottage with her daughter Olivia (Benattar). She has no recollection of meeting Terry as a child or the accident, while going through his old home something inside him begins to stir and discovers that Katherine's uncle Warren (Pinsent) an old friend of his father's knows where her father (Nichols) has been for all these years.

Slowly Terry finds himself falling in love her while trying to keep the secret of her father quiet, eventually the truth comes out leaving Katherine shocked and upset. He heads back to the city but the love in his heart is so strong that he goes back home for good to Katherine and there's a happy ending.

My favorite scene is when she's on the phone telling Terry she loves him and suddenly he's standing there and they run into each other's arms and begin kissing.

this is a definite must see movie 9/10

This was a wonderful movie. Hard to find a nice movie like this now a days! Sinice was amazing. He was not one of my favorite actors because of the rough characters he played in previous movies (Forest Gump, Ransom). However, after watching this movie I am now aware of what a wonderful actor he is. It was exciting to watch his character grow from a cute young little boy into a handsome man. Growing with the experiences of his life into a compassionate man trying to reunite a man driven from his family by a fatal accident. I laughed, cried, and cried for joy when he ended up back in Maine. This is a movie I am going to purchase to put in my DVD collection!

what a load of sap....i don't like gary whats his name because he is a wooden actor to begin with.....then couple him with s female lead that has no business doing the job either and you get utter garbage...i also found it preposterous that a boat that was clearly tied securely to the dock, broke loose all by itself merely to create a crisis situation...surely, the dreamer that wrote this fairy tale could have found better feasibility to make transitions....i get it now......i ran a csi check on it and discovered it was written and cut so that it would fit a certain time slot with commercials added....the best actor in the story is the dog....

I loved this movie. I was entertained throughout. The unfolding story, scenery and characters kept me intrigued. The sadness in this movie was handled in a tender way, from the accident to the revealing truth on the couch. I wish a bit more about Terry's father and what made him tick was revealed. Prior to Terry arriving at the hospital I was rooting for father & son to come to forgiveness and understanding. I was pleased that the daughter was an adopted girl who was blind. At one point Terry talks about finding what is important in life and he finds it. Gary Sinise has such a wonderfully enticing voice. When Terry said "turn around", my heart nearly jumped out of my chest. I want that kind of love! AM

Probably one of the worst movies I've ever watched. Nothing in this movie makes sense at all. Not to mention that it's extremely corny and not creative by any means. I made an account on this website just to comment on how horrible this movie was. My Mom and I watched it and both didn't understand what was going on.

In the beginning some kid leaves his Father because he's consumed with his job and doesn't care about his family. It looks promising. And then maybe 10 or 15 minutes into the movie it goes downhill. He comes back to see his father, but his father dies before he gets there. So he goes looking around for 'answers' about his father. Meanwhile he meets an old friend of his father who has a brother that ran over some lady and her daughter earlier in the movie. So he ends up falling in love with this woman who was the daughter! It is simply horrible.

Please spare yourself from the confusion and disgust. Do NOT watch this movie. The end.

I just finished watching this film and I am going to comment on the positive aspects of it in regards to how I related to it personally. Overall, this film appealed to me based on how the main male character (Gary Sinise) was "caught in the middle" of trying to figure out whether or not to reveal a variety of secrets after returning home to take care of his recently deceased father's estate. The "left hand does not know what the right hand is doing" type of aspect that this film portrays in a variety of ways, is what I found interesting to think about and analyze. So if you are willing to ignore any minor inconsistencies of the film plot and just enjoy it for it's main theme of Gary Sinise's character trying to figure out what it will take to "do the right thing", then you may find this film a pleasure to watch. As they say, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", which is why I personally found this film to be quite beautiful in it's overall message of inspiring hope for solving unexpected quagmires. The idea of being able to find positive solutions for any type of difficult problem that you may be confronted with trying to figure out how to deal with when you weren't expecting to perform this type of task, is what I personally found to be the most attractive aspect of this film's plot portrayal. Also, the idea of what it will take for a person to become willing to "open up" and discuss things they normally wouldn't discuss with somebody else, is another aspect of this film that I found intriguing to put into perspective as a whole. To a certain degree, this added a kind of therapeutic healing aspect to the film's overall plot, something that seems to rarely occur (sadly) in any film in this day and age. This is why I rate this film a "10".

***SPOILERS--No way to detail complaints without them******************* This movie has a promising beginning. We see a motherless nine year old boy who is already beginning to realize that his father is so consumed with his job as caretaker for the big city rich who summer in his Maine hometown that he will never have time for his son. The young boy meets a pampered rich girl whose parents are that age-old cliche--nice guy/tennis and ski bum who married into money and the cold wife who never lets him forget who holds the purse strings. These children and the upper class father are in an accident that will break apart the young girl's family. The children will not meet again until thirty years later and anyone who saw this film's television commercials--or has even see a TV movie-- knows what happens next, but, my god, the writer and director could have tried harder to inject a little verve and originality into the formula! I mainly watched this so I could see one of my favorite actors play something besides a tortured, corrupt soul, but Gary Sinise looked so uncomfortable or stiff much of the time that all this movie showed was that either he should never try to play a romantic lead or that he felt so defeated by the script that he gave up before filming started. Poor Ms. Richardson has to deliver such clunky lines--has the writer ever heard an actual woman talk?--that she should get some sort of combat pay. The best part of the film deals with the children and the teen-aged Terry's alienation from his father--after that. . .SPOILER ALERT: I especially resented the "let's ice skate, fall down and laugh" scene--gee, I've never seen this before--instead an honest attempt to portray a burgeoning relationship. In one of the few surprising moments of the film, we find out the female lead has a daughter who is blind. Maybe the child actress who read for the part was actually blind and they wrote it into the script, but if that wasn't the case, then I see no reason for this plot wrinkle AS IT WAS PRESENTED except to add just one more heart-tugging element to a film that was already dealing--in a superficial and ham-handed way--with death, homelessness, estrangement, and guilt. The whole situation just seemed like one more cheap ploy to pull pathos out of a film that didn't know how to use good acting and sharp writing to earn it.