Once Fallen (2010)
4/10
Great opportunity - just missed
17 November 2011
This film is about a young man, Chance (Brian Presley - Borderland), who has a lot of problems with his life, that he must overcome.

His father Liam, (Ed Harris) is currently in prison for beating a man to death, and has been elected head of the Aryan Nation, which gives him certain privileges, but also some obligations that he must fulfill.

Chance's best friend Beat (Chad Lindberg - The Fast and the Furious) has a lot of psychological problems, and is currently involved with a notorious drug-dealer, Rath (Ash Adams - Lionheart), who also happens to be a crooked cop, and doesn't take no for an answer.

Apart from these problems, Chance has just found out that his ex-girlfriend Kat, (Alison Eastwood - Tightrope) has been raising his child while he was in jail, but now decides to split and leave the kid with him, all the while Rath is hassling him, Beat, and Liam.

Chance gets some help from his old pal, bar-owner Eddie (Peter Weller - RoboCop), who in return expects Chance to do some street-fighting for him. Random fights is the only job Chance can get, apart from dealing drugs, but as he now has a young son to raise, and recently finds new love in Pearl (Taraji P. Henson - Hustle & Flow), who just happens to be black - something Liam's fellow Aryan brothers certainly doesn't approve of, and they send their number two, Sonny (Peter Greene - Pulp Fiction) to tell him about it in person.

The thing about this film that makes it fall beneath the cracks of goodness, is the sheer lack of common sense. For starters, it doesn't make any sense, that: 1) Liam became the head of the Aryan nation, but doesn't seem very well-liked by ANY of the other Aryans. 2) Chance's girlfriend just leaving her son with him - an almost complete stranger - after raising the kid for 5 years! 3) The part about Rath ending the way it did - made NO sense whatsoever.

In the end, it all just feels like the story could've gone in SO many other directions, which would've been better. And the producers had an all-star stellar cast of character-actors, which they didn't use for anything at all!

I mean, the movie has Richard Tyson (Kindergarten Cop), Antonio Vargas (Starsky & Hutch), Jesse D. Goins (RoboCop), Sticky Fingaz (Onyx), Rance Howard (Ed Wood), and Steve friggin' Railsback (Lifeforce), and a LOT of other great character-actors, but they're all just completely WASTED in this production, only half of them getting any lines, and the rest just appearing in a few minutes with hardly any screen-time at all... it makes no sense, not to use any of them for anything.. why not just cast some random unknowns instead?

I felt like a good opportunity was missed here. Some of the points came across well, but mostly it was just wasted.
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