Review of Angel Heart (1987) by Steven R — 29 Oct 2007

A Faustian spin through post-war New York and Louisiana, 'Angel Heart' tells a very old story from a surprisingly original and wonderfully chilling angle. The plot, focusing on an increasingly violent missing person's case, is reasonably simple, but the backstory which triggers it is remarkably complex.

When you reassemble the pieces at the end it does make sense, but only just. De Niro is superb as Louis Cyphre, the 'businessman' with some collateral to collect, infusing the role with just the right balance of sardonic humour and demonic threat.

Mickey Rourke gives what will probably always be his best performance as Harry Angel, a shell-shocked war veteran and disheveled P.I. The supporting cast is excellent, especially Charlotte Rampling as an occultist, and Lisa Bonet as a teen voodoo witch.

But the real star here is writer/director Alan Parker. He has an extraordinary talent for the simple but powerfully unsettling image: a slow zoom on the exterior wall of a New York hotel; a New Year's Eve crowd in Times Square; a descending elevator; a sweeping stair; the rotating blades of a fan.

These images are simple, cold, yet positively brimming with hellish menace. Trevor Jones's music is the perfect accompaniment, its saxophones careening wildly over menacing rhythms and the ubiquitous throb of a beating heart.

It's a thoroughly disturbing marriage which will have fear closing around you with the same grim certainty as the protagonist's fate.