Almost an Angel

A small time crook becomes convinced he has become an angel after a traumatic incident and resolves to perform the work of one.

• Director:John Cornell
• Genre:Comedy
• Runtime:95 minutes

Cast

Paul Hogan : Terry Dean
Elias Koteas : Steve Garner
Linda Kozlowski : Rose Garner
Doreen Lang : Mrs. Garner
Douglas Seale : Father

Terry Dean (Paul Hogan), a professional burglar specialized in sabotaging electronic surveillance systems, stands before his release from yet another stint in prison. Following a fellow inmate’s suggestion, he decides to switch to bank robbery instead, with a special twist of his own design: first by having the security cameras record TV shows he would connect them to with a modified remote control, then entering disguised as a celebrity; the confusion over this unexpected appearance would serve to confound a detailed description.

Terry’s first heist is successful, but shortly afterwards he witnesses a young boy about to be overrun by a van; he impulsively pushes the child away and is himself hit. While in the hospital, he has a nebulous experience (which may have been caused by Highway to Heaven playing on the room’s TV) in which he meets God (Charlton Heston; this is used as a pun later on) who introduces himself as Terry’s ‘probation helper’. Though Terry has lived a sinful life, his last deed, impulsive as it was, has earned him a second chance to save his soul – by doing God’s work as an angel in training.

After reawakening, Terry tries another hold-up (this time as Rod Stewart), but a stroke of bad luck and a gang of amateurs interfere. During this, one of the thugs tries to shoot but fails to kill him (he had loaded his gun with blanks). Thinking himself to be an angel now, Terry reconsiders his ways, seeks advice in a church, and then he follows several ‘signs’ to another town. In a bar, he meets Steve Garner (Elias Koteas), an embittered young man and a wheelchair user. In order to bring him out of his self-pity, Terry engages him in a fist-fight – on equal terms, sitting fixed on a stool -; Steve, taken with Terry’s acceptance of him as a person, not a cripple, strikes up a friendship with Terry and offers him a place to stay at the youth center for children and teens, which he runs with his sister Rose (Linda Kozlowski).

Rose is at first suspicious about Terry, but Terry proves himself by slyly intimidating two drug dealers into leaving the center’s area and helping out as much as he can, and Rose gradually falls in love with him. The center itself, however, is in financial difficulties, since its backer George Bealeman (Parley Baer), while claiming himself to be a faithful Christian, refuses to provide any more funds. Since he has no angel’s powers, Terry uses his technical know-how to convince him otherwise: by recording and re-editing a segment from TV Evangelist Rev. Barton’s (Ben Slack) telecast (which Bealeman watches feverently), and fitting the cross at the rooftop of the center’s church with lighting effects, triggered by his universal remote. Read more

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