ANGEL HEART, written & directed by Alan Parker, was crafted off William Hjortsberg’s novel “Falling Angel”. Stephen King described the 264 pages “as if Raymond Chandler had written The Exorcist.” We can’t speak to the 1978 book, but Parker’s hotly anticipated movie was one of the box office disappointments of 1987, beheaded at 50th place with a gross of just $22,400,000 against the $18,000,000 price tag. Reviews at the time were divided; today it has ardent defenders. We call a mixed bag.*
New York City, 1955. Low-rent private investigator ‘Harry Angel’ (Mickey Rourke) takes what he thinks will be a simple track-a-guy case from a dandified, smugly cool customer calling himself ‘Louis Cyphere’ (Robert De Niro), hoping to locate a crooner named ‘Johnny Favorite’, apparently neurologically injured a decade back during the Second World War. Cyphere has a debt to square, Harry could use the moola. Searching for the missing singer takes Angel from Poughkeepsie to Harlem, then Coney Island, finally down to New Orleans. As clues, locales and acquaintances accumulate so do sudden, increasingly grisly deaths of those who did or do know something about Favorite, and Harry himself gets roughed up numerous times along the way. As the mayhem mounts Mr. Cyphere remains patient, but determined, and has no problem increasing Harry’s pay. Exactly how service will really be rendered, by whom and for what, is a puzzle.
“They say there’s just enough religion in the world to make men hate one another but not enough to make them love.”
Parker’s movies are always stylish and big on mood; the visual design for this one goes for monochrome and is insistently dingy, accentuating the increasingly dark turns as the mystery shifts from neo-noir hunt & gather territory to psychological mind-f-ing and ultimately taking the long drop to the supernaturally horrific. There are a number of compelling moments and several startling passages of nasty action, plus amusing testy interplay between Rourke and De Niro. The moody score was composed by Trevor Jones. But it’s also over-padded with exposition into 113 minutes, a good many of them either sluggish or clumsy; the visual palette and reiteration drains energy so that by the denouement it feels like a pointless meander in pain & futility, directorial flourishes & performance mannerisms. The locations in New York and Louisiana are bleakly rendered, especially New Orleans and environs, never so unappealing.
Rourke, 34, is both interesting and exasperating; his effectively off-kilter line readings and expressions get self-sabotaged by his adoption of a ridiculous look that goes past rumpled and rebellious to just plain greasy and grungy. Hair, stubble, clothes; it’s like he slouched in from under a bridge connecting Skid Row to No Man’s Land, with enough reliance on cigarettes as a character prop that Sean Penn could use him for Pretense Infringement. The much ballyhoo’d sex scene with Lisa Bonet (19, feature debut) isn’t a turn-on (unless you’re a vampire) as much as a calculated shot at controversy, mainly because she came straight off TV’s phony-baloney The Cosby Show. She’s fine, but slinky ‘Epiphany Proudfoot’s attraction to the bum-like Harry doesn’t pass the smell-his-costume hurdle. Beyond their bed-rumble, she does throw herself into a wild voodoo number with serious abandon. De Niro, 44, comes off best, sandwiching this coyly devilish “Special Appearance” between two other colorful villain roles in The Mission and The Untouchables. A boiled egg hasn’t looked this challenging since Cool Hand Luke.
With Charlotte Rampling (glorified cameo, because if things aren’t weird enough make sure to cast Charlotte Rampling), Stocker Fontelieu, Brownie McGhee, Michael Higgins, Charles Gordone, Dann Florek, Eliott Keener, Kathleen Wilhoite, Elizabeth Whitcraft and Pruit Taylor Vince (26, debut).
Movies ala Mark 