Review of Angel Heart (1987) by Ryan H — 12 Oct 2012

Why did Mickey Rourke have to go out and get all of that plastic surgery? He looks so ridiculous now. He couldn't play another role like Harry Angel ever again even if he wanted to. There are a couple of silly things about Angel Heart, but overall it's incredible.

Alan Parker does an amazing job taking you through this noir where he gives you just little bits of information to see if you can put the pieces together before he explains it all. Harry Angel's a private detective who has been hired by a mysterious man to figure out if Johnny Favorite's still alive and where he can be found.

Favorite owes Louis Cypher some money and it's time to pay up. This is all Angel really knows. After he questions the first guy about Favorite he comes back to his house and finds him dead, so Angel goes back to Cypher to figure out what exactly is going on and instead of giving him more information he offers him more money.

Of course Angel takes the money and continues his questioning, which leads him down to Louisiana. Throughout this is what screams Ryan Hibbett. It's a film noir mixed with cerebral aspects. We enter Angel's mind and see things without the film explicitly telling us they are not real.

Also it plays off the noirs very well, like the rain when Angel finds Epiphany outside of his hotel and the shots of the fans. It reminds me of that interview where someone asked Ridley Scott why there were old-fashioned ceiling fans in Blade Runner and he replies because they were such a big visual part of classic film noir.

Alan Parker seems to be playing on that here as well, even though this is set in 1950s and the fans actually make sense to be there. While in Louisiana, Angel finds himself discovering some kind of religion that takes place with many of the black people in town.

Also he discovers whenever he comes into contact with someone that secretly knows something about Favorite but won't say anything they end up dead. What do these dark rituals have in common with Johnny Favorite and why is everyone dying? At this point people could be killing the ones who know anything to keep Favorite's secret, or Favorite is trying to keep himself from being discovered so that no one can find him.

Or maybe Cypher is actually Favorite and he's killing anyone that can be linked to him, but he doesn't want to kill too many and he wants to set up Angel so he's never caught. Those are the three main possibilities, and it seems like Epiphany probably will be the one to unravel the story for us.

She is the daughter of Favorite, but she has never met him. It's just like her own child who doesn't know his father. But what we discover is not something that I had really thought of. It's like Shutter Island: it would be too obvious for him to be the person he's looking for, but somehow it works out here.

Angel doesn't realize he's Favorite because of amnesia he got after the war and he received someone else's soul in a ritual to hide himself from the devil. Here's one cheesy and funny thing: Louis Cypher was a play on words that actually stands for Lucifer.

I don't know how anyone thought that was a good idea, especially to have Angel explicitly explain that to the audience. The other cheesy and funny part: the child with the demon eyes in the end to show that he was the spawn of the devil.

Those two things really drag this down. It's already a little loose of a film in the question of why Angel actually killed all of these people. You can come up with some kind of answer, but it's never really satisfying.

And it's also silly to have him fuck his own daughter. Is this what inspired Oldboy? Everyone here gives great performances, especially Mickey Rourke when he keeps asking who was the boy. The visuals, music, and atmosphere in Angel Heart are top notch.

Other things could have been handled better, but it's still one hell of a film.