It starts out as a good, hard-nosed, little noir mystery and then, quite suddenly, turns into a supernatural thriller.
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I can count my favorite Mickey Rourke films on the finger of one hand. It isn´t that I don´t like Rourke as an actor; in fact, I rather admire some of his realistically rendered down-and-outers. But, his relentless tough-guy image long ago wore out its welcome. "Angel Heart" is the exception. Rourke is just right as a hard-boiled private eye.
Besides, the movie gives us two stories for the price of one. It starts out as a good, hard-nosed, little noir mystery and then, quite suddenly, turns into a supernatural thriller. It´s grittier, with more edge and a lot more sex and violence, than Denzel Washington´s later entry in the same genre, "Fallen." This new DVD edition of "Angel Heart" not only makes the film more fun to watch, it even helps the viewer make more sense of the story.
In the movie, Rourke plays Harry Angel, a New York detective circa 1955, hired by a mysterious and malevolent-looking client to track down a missing person named Johnny Favorite. The client, played by Robert DeNiro, is called Louis Cyphre; yes, Cyphre as in "cipher," a zero, or a key to a puzzle, a secret code. When the movie first opened, I recall reading about Rourke saying something to the effect that after working with DeNiro for the first time he didn´t think DeNiro was so tough after all. It made me wonder if old Mick had a firm grip on just what was real and what was art. I suspect there is a lot more of Rourke in his movie portrayals and vice versa than meets the eye.
Anyway, the plot takes Angel from Brooklyn to Harlem to New Orleans and involves him in everything from voodoo to murder, with gallons of blood and lots of chickens thrown in. I especially liked the repeated symbolism of slowly revolving circular fans and descending elevators, as each scene leads to ever hotter climes.
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