World Famous Comics: Angel Heart (Special Edition)
Angel Heart (Special Edition)
Starring: Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, Lisa Bonet, Charlotte Rampling, Stocker Fontelieu Directed By: Alan Parker Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: DVD Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC Number of Items: 1 Region Code: 1 Release Date: May 18, 2004 Running Time: 113 minutes Studio: Lions Gate Theatrical Release Date: March 06, 1987
Product Description: Harry angel is a tough new york detective pitted against the most fearsome adversary possible. It is a provocative and chilling story entwined in the world of the occult set in backwoods new orleans. Studio: Lions Gate Home Ent. Release Date: 02/06/2007 Starring: Lisa Bonet Mickey Rourke Run time: 112 minutes Rating: R
Amazon.com: Set in Harlem and New Orleans in 1955, this supernatural thriller stirred a brief controversy when released in 1987 because some scenes featuring Lisa Bonet (then a popular cast member of The Cosby Show) were considered too sexually explicit to be rated R. The edited material was restored for the unrated video release, and the movie now makes a fitting double bill with Fallen, with its similar plot about a sullen detective (Mickey Rourke) who is hired to find a missing person by a shady client with pointy fingernails named Louis Cyphre (Lucifer, get it?), played with subtle menace by Robert De Niro. Rourke's investigation leads him into an underworld of voodoo and forbidden desires, and as the mystery unfolds director Alan Parker fills every scene with conspicuous style and atmospheric excess, compelling critic Pauline Kael to observe that, "Parker simply doesn't have the gift of making evil seductive, and he edits like a flasher." And yet, this movie does cast a spell of its own (Roger Ebert's review was considerably more charitable), and the performances of Rourke, De Niro, Bonet, and Charlotte Rampling are well suited to the ominous mood. --Jeff Shannon
DEVIL MAY CARE ^ Indeed the Devil does care in this flick. Another oddball movie that stirred a bit of controversy and i think got evil enough to scare the actors themselves. Diabolical. Mickey Rourke is an amateur in this, but not bad, really, it's worth watching just for DeNiro playing Satan.
The Mystery of "Angel Heart" ^ The 1987 film "Angel Heart" should be considered, fundamentally, a mystery. Its a mystery in the sense of what the ancient Rosicrucians and other such mystical societies meant by that term: a spiritual truth made known to man by divine revelation. Harry Angel, a private investigator, is searching for Johnny Favorite. According to the Christian myth, Lucifer was God's favorite angel until he was replaced by the heavenly father's human creation (and we humans have been caught in this jealous struggle ever since). Even Johnny Favorite's original name was Liebling (German for "dearest or most precious"). Many religions and mystics speak of humans as half animal and half divine - that would make us all, in a way, "hairy angels". In the film the heart represents the center of the self, the divine aspect - and it was the heart that the infernal Johnny Favorite tore out of Harry Angel to take the innocent's place in the world and submerge his baser identity. "Angel Heart" is about the search for lost identity (the original case of identity theft, I suppose - in a metaphysical sense). Are we also, to one degree or another, private investigators of the soul, searching for our lost selves? This movie is filled with this kind of religious symbolism and Jungian archetypes. In a way it asks what came first, the chicken or the egg? Was it the creator or its creation? There's the character, Dr. Fowler (the drug addicted physician) - even his name is symbolic ("a handler of fowl") juxtaposed to the voodoo rites involving the handling and sacrifice of chickens in spiritual rituals. I see the chickens in "Angel Heart" as representative of the life force (the carrier of the egg, or "the Soul", afterall). Fowler is a man of science which, in many ways, is our modern world's new priesthood of materialism. Science's relationship with the life force has, of course, been quite self-destructive - besides the great comforts and breakthroughs in knowledge its created it has also brought about nuclear weapons and other meltdowns of the natural world. In addition, western man has become addicted to technology and increasingly under "the spell" of materialism. Beyond the layer involving the christian myth - Lucifer and the fall of humanity - the film also has the greater Jungian perspective that takes in all religious myth along with individual dreams. Carl Jung's central idea is what he calls the "process of individuation", which is what he feels leads to consciousness, to completeness (like a flower opening to sunlight). This involves confronting ones "shadow", which is basically the unconscious, negative part of ones psyche (the image in the mirror to painful to ponder). In the context of the film, the black race, as portrayed in Harlem and New Orleans, is shown as a societal projection of "the shadow" - one that white-western man has demonized as something to be kept apart and to be feared. Harry Angel's intrusion into this world is seen as something taboo and dangerous for he's venturing into an area thats "for colored patrons only", one in which the white man is not suppose to participate. This confrontation with the dark-side, "the shadow", contains the truth of who one really is as an individual, which is beyond good and evil and the world of duality - of heaven and hell. Jung speaks of "the anima" which in the case of the male is the totality of the unconscious feminine psychological qualities that he possesses. The anima (or dream-girl) is an archeptype of the collective unconscious (which all individual psyches emerge from) and it will manifest itself in life and by appearing as figures in dreams (I hear Rourke whistling "Girl Of My Dreams" in the background). Jung wrote that confronting ones "shadow" is an apprentice-piece, while confronting ones "anima" is the master-piece. The character Epiphany is a pure anima figure. The word epiphany also has the definition, among others, as "a manifestation of deitys on earth such as angels appearing to mortals". Harry Angel is drawn to her in his search, spiritually and erotically, because he seeks to be re-united with the unconscious aspect of his true identity - the one that was there before the original fall, before he hid himself behind a mask (what Jung refers to as "the persona"- the front that one presents to the world). But first Harry needs to confront the shadow-side, make the blood sacfrifice and make his hellish descent. This has to happen before he can ever be redeemed and experience grace - he will have to do his time in Hell. This is like Dante wandering through Hades before he can find his feminine ideal, Beatrice ( another classic anima, "Girl Of My Dreams" figure). The vicious attack dog that chases Angel is a contemporary hellhound which in myths are often depicted as chasing a lost soul - "There's A Hellhound On My Trail", to quote the great bluesman Robert Johnson. One could also say, "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" (to quote Bob Dylan) in discussing another reoccuring image in the film. The rain can be seen as a cleansing of the soul, a purification, which first must come with judgement and personally being held accountable for who and what one REALLY is. After that its possible to be resurrected, to be whole - the final flowering of the individuation process. Its not by coincidence that Lucifer the Angel in ancient texts has been referred to as "the bringer of light" (the latin translation of the name) since its his intervention that forces the hero to confront his real self. Its funny that I've seen people refer to this film as a simple story - I guess they also consider the bible simple, too.
In some ways the most fascinating level going on in "Angel Heart" is that Mickey Rourke seems to have been acting out the mythic story in his "real" life. The film is filled with parallels with "the actor's" own development - selling ones soul for stardom, losing the bargain, undergoing facial re-construction, etc.
...This isn't just being a great poetic actor (as Sean Penn has referred to him) - its being an iconic actor . . . and "Angel Heart" is an iconic film.
two thumbnails up ^ I am rating this movie simply for volume (there were only three other reviews). "Angel Heart" is a dandy. There's really no other movie quite like it.
A Dark, Deliciously Entertaining Masterpiece of the Macabre. ^ One of the forgotten gems of the 1980s', "Angel Heart" attracted a great deal of controversy due to its violence and sexual contebt (mostly because it involved a squeaky clean Cosby kid). 23 years later, the film remains a stylish, tightly scripted and marvellously acted combo of horror and neo-noir.
Mickey Rourke gives the most layered and dynamic performance of his career as Harold Angel, a sleazy Brooklyn private eye hired by the mysterious Louis Cyphre (a creepy, bearded Robert DeNiro) to find Johnny Favorite, a famous 1940s' crooner who mysteriously dissapeared some time ago. Apparently, Favorite backed out on a business deal with Cyphre, and Cyphre is intent on getting back what is his.
What starts out as a routine 'missing persons' case becomes a more sordid, darker affair. Those involved in Favorite's disappearance seemingly wind up dead not long after Angel interviews them. Things take a turn for the worse when Angel ventures out to New Orleans, where he encounters a voodoo preistess (Lisa Bonet) whose mother had a romantic liason with Favorite. As bodies continue to pile up and Angel becomes increasingly implicated in their murders, the truth about Favorite and Cyphre is revealed in a devasating and unpredixtable climax - one that does not bode well for Angel.
As stated earlier. "Angel Heart" is a dynamite movie. What could've been a messy attempt at combining genres works flawlessly thanks to a solid script. Rourke gives an Oscar worthy performance. He appears in every scene and is dynamite from start to finish, perfectly showcasing the evolution of Angel from confident, streetwise detective to a frightened novice in way over his head. DeNiro gives one of his most underrated performances as Louis Cyphre, and Bonet proves to be a surprisingly adept romantic interest.
Alan Parker does an amazing job as director, with lush cinematography that makes the grimy streets of Brooklyn and the dark, dank swamps of New Orleans come alive, allowing them to add as much to the development of the story as the three leads.
"Angel Heart" is a chilling supernatural thriller, and a high water mark for all those involved in its prosuction.
very good Movie ^ Great movie I already had regular DVD had to get the blu-Ray version really supenseful
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