The Avenging Angel


The Avenging Angel is a 1995 American Western television film directed by Craig R. Baxley and coproduced by and starring Tom Berenger, as well as James Coburn. The film premiered on TNT on January 22, 1995. The movie is based on a book of the same name by Gary Stewart, and features real life characters Brigham Young, Porter Rockwell, and Wild Bill Hickman. The fictional main character Miles Utley is an orphan raised to be a Danite bodyguard tasked with protecting the interests of top leaders in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the newly colonized Utah Territory in the mid-late 1800s.

Cast

Co-producer and main actor Berenger said the religious aspect of the story "is what I thought made it different than other Westerns. Otherwise, it would just be a Western. God knows, we have seen enough of those. I was kind of intrigued. And then Dennis Nemec did the script. It is a killer script—real economical and real right. He cut out a lot of the fat."