Angel Heart (1987)

Pretty Good

People are voting emotionally.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Saw this when it first came out-was haunted. This film asked-Do we know who we are? Didn't watch it until recently-so that's 30 years. It still haunts. After some combat and scotch-it still haunts. Asking the same question-Do we know who we are? Harry is the ultimate tragic character or is he? After reading the boards here and the references to the book, probably not. But, but...I have my own theory. Harry is so identifiable. Not perfect, but pretty decent. Should he be punished for Favorite's sins? Is he Favorite? What happened to Harry? Mickey Rourke in his prime-women wanted to be with him and men wanted to be him. Outstanding performance by Rourke.

As dark and brooding a slice of American Gothic as you could wish for, ANGEL HEART is one of the best straight horror outings to come out of the late '80s – a time when most genre offerings were cheesy, rubbery outings of stupidity. ANGEL HEART is in essence a mood piece. Set during the 1950s, it chronicles the efforts of a private detective to track down a missing person who soon finds himself in some very dark places. With a string of unpleasant sex and violence scenes, excellent direction from the always-good Alan Parker and some quite wonderful performances, this is a real classic. There aren't that many films that deal with modern-day voodoo in a non-biased way so this one's a real treat.Parker is adept at crafting atmosphere and you can almost smell the cigarette smoke in this seedy, grubby little film. Mickey Rourke, in a career-best performance, is Harry Angel, the protagonist. Angel is a pretty unpleasant guy who thinks nothing of using violence as a method and yet Rourke embodies him with a raw humanity that makes us warm to him from the start. Although he's the archetypal tough guy he projects an air of bruised vulnerability that makes him riveting to see on screen. He has some great supporting actors with him, too; Lisa Bonet excels in a layered performance as the voodoo-practising Epiphany Proudfoot; Charlotte Rampling as a fortune teller; finally Robert De Niro, as great as ever as the sinister Louis Cyphre.The film is pretty slowly paced but laced with moments of action and violence that breathe life into it. My attention never wavered for a second. There are occasional missteps – I could have done without the 'glowing eye' stuff that takes place at the climax, that only serves to cheapen the effect; good when used in films like FRIGHT NIGHT, but not here! But the handling of Rourke's gradual realisation as he pieces together the mystery and his final understanding of the true horror of his situation is top notch and the film then ends on an unforgettable piece of imagery. Altogether a great work and a film I thoroughly enjoyed.

Angel Heart is a horror mystery film that features Mickey Rourke,Lisa Bonet and legendary actor,Robert De Niro. It was adapted from the novel entitled Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg.Written and directed by Alan Parker,the story was set in the 1950's wherein a Brooklyn private eye who was hired to locate a missing pop singer.As the investigator tries to solve the mystery,it turns out that anyone who has a clue to the mystery has come up dead.As always,the critically acclaimed novel has a better story in the book as compared to the movie.But nevertheless,it was still worth the view considering that the cast involved provided a good performance from Rourke,De Niro and surprisingly Bonet.Added to that,it was twisty, erotic and definitely splendid.Too bad that it is under-appreciated by movie goers. Give it a chance and it would not be surprising that one may find it an unpopular gem.

One of the problems with the story of Faust, the man in the German legend who sold his soul to the Devil, is that we never understood why anyone would make such a foolish bargain in the first place. A few decades of wealth, power, fame, and sex in exchange for an eternity of suffering the fires of Hell? Evil may be fascinating, but stupidity never is, and we quickly lose interest in the fate of anyone dumb enough to do that. The story fares much better when understood in the allegorical sense, of course, but it is always better if a story makes sense literally if it is to have much value figuratively.This movie solves that problem. Johnny Liebling is a crooner who thinks he knows a way to trick Satan. He makes a pact with him, in which Satan gets Johnny's soul in exchange for fame as a singer, under the name Johnny Favourite. Having made the deal and benefited from it, he then performs a ritual that involves cutting the heart out of a soldier and eating it. By so doing, Johnny is able to substitute the soldier's soul for his own, the result being that the soldier's soul will have to suffer the fires of Hell, while Johnny's soul does not. The soldier's name is Harold Angel, suggesting his innocence, of course. As part of the ritual, the soldier's dog tags are sealed up in vase. Only if Johnny himself opens the vase will the ritual be undone. Because Satan wants Johnny's soul and not Angel's, he must trick Johnny into breaking open the vase.When World War II breaks out, Johnny is drafted and subsequently suffers an injury, which causes him to have amnesia. He spends some time in a hospital, but his friends get him out. Not knowing what to do with him, they simply drop him off in a crowd of people on New Year's Eve. As a result of Johnny's confused memory about swapping souls with Harold Angel, he comes to believe that he is Harold Angel, and eventually starts working as a private detective under that name.Ten years after the war, which is when the movie starts, this Harold Angel is hired by Louis Cyphre (Lucifer) to find Johnny Favourite. Angel does not realize it, but he has been hired by the Devil to find himself. We do not realize it either, at this point, and we are encouraged by the movie to like Angel and to identify with him. He seems to be basically a nice guy. As he starts investigating, he begins experiencing disturbing images from the past. Little by little, he begins to suspect the truth. He is horrified at the idea that he might be Johnny Favourite, and having come to like him and identify with him, we are horrified too.In his desperation to assure himself that he is who he thinks he is, he breaks open the vase, and the dog tags of the real Harold Angel fall out. The spell is broken. At this point, Louis Cyphre appears, announcing that Johnny's soul now belongs to him. Finally, recent memories that Johnny had distorted are replaced by accurate ones, and he is forced into the realization that he has murdered several people.Because Johnny thought he had a way to trick the Devil, this story works on a literal plane. And by making us like him as Harold Angel and identify with him, the movie forces us to realize that we too may not be as good as we like to think we are, that we too have something inside us that is evil.But a remark made by Louis Cyphre gives this Faustian story a new twist. Cyphre says that Johnny was doomed the minute he cut that boy's heart out. In other words, all that dabbling in black magic and making a pact with the Devil was just so much hocus-pocus. In itself, it was harmless nonsense, and Johnny would never have gone to Hell for that. It was only when he did something truly evil, when he murdered that soldier, that Johnny was damned. By this remark, Cyphre links the literal understanding of this story with its allegorical one.