Word: angellic
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...unfortunately, I'm a little confused. I'm not sure who to blame for the fiasco that is Angel Heart. Should I sue TriStar for false advertising, or Alan Parker for the waste and abuse of directorial talent? For Angel Heart is not the movie TriStar wants it to be--a sexually charged murder mystery centered around the disrobing of Cosby Show sibling Lisa Bonet. Mr. Parker is shooting for something greater, more profound--an intellectually and sexually charged murder mystery centered around the devil, featuring the disrobing of Ms. Bonet. I've been...
Ostensibly, Angel Heart deals with hard-boiled detective Harry Angel's (Mickey Rourke) quest for a long missing crooner Johnny Favorite. Favorite has been absent since his return from World War II, where a head wound left his a vegetable and permanently disfigured. Angel is commissioned in this fruitless search by the mysterious Louis Cyphre (Robert DeNiro) who needs proof of Favorite's death in order to collect collateral from a contract he had with the singer...
...Angel's search leads him from a mental hospital in upstate New York to an unfriendly Baptist church in Harlem, and, in the film's climactic sequences, to the dank swampland surrounding New Orleans. It is here that Angel discovers the nubile Epiphany Proudfoot (Bonet), as well as the truth about Favorite, Cyphre, and himself...
...problem with Angel Heart is that it has greater ambitions than merely updating this genre. It wants to combine The Maltese Falcon with the psychological and intellectual thrills of Rosemary's Baby and Don't Look Now. As Angel progresses deeper into his investigation, he is plunged into the world of voodoo worship and animal sacrifice. He witnesses Epiphany engage in a ritual sacrifice of chickens to the Dark Lord, has recurring hallucinations of orgies and encounters a masked, black-clad creature, culminating in the now infamous scene in which gallons of blood fall on him and young Proudfoot while...
This style can be effective and powerful. In Angel Heart, it is simply ridiculous. The film's momentum is constantly interrupted by sensational images, from jejune religious symbolism to graphic violence and incest, none of which are any more exciting than Angel's plodding investigation...