Terrorised by horrific dreams, Thomas Daggett (Elias Koteas) leaves his church on the eve of his ordination as a priest. Working as a homicide detective years later, Daggett is assigned a grisly murder case with religious overtones. It transpires that the dead man's soul is in danger of falling into the hands of the human-hating angel Gabriel (Christopher Walken) - who is embarking on a war to wrest the kingdom of Heaven from God - and Daggett is the only man on Earth who can stop him.