Angel of Death

Ok the actings are not so great but it is a good action flick.

I enjoyed this. I have the all i can rent blockbuster membership so i see A LOT of flicks. And many only the first chapter, then skip to last to see f/x or finale. This was thorughly enjoyable. Zoe did a kick booty job. She was hot, acted well, even the tough scenes, I never cringed at all. I sort of cringed in 'Death Proof' at the acting she did, which was non per Quentin's direction... but in this, she did it. she delivered her lines. Her acting, and her fight sequences were great. Hard, gritty, sexy but not SEXY ridiculous, but sexy hot gritty cool, you know what I mean. Her moves looked & felt real, like, oh yah, that's how a women can fight a big dude, like me, I'm buying it. gun play was excellent too, as in, no gunplay, just solid use of guns, knives, fists, mirrors, ground, ...great! story was simple, straightforward & well paced. direction was solid.

kudos to the Director of photo, i really liked the lighting, the contrasts, the light/shadow, the silhouettes, really done well. i think i'm buying this one. something i can enjoy watching every few years along with Leon/the professional, seagal's first 4 movies, bruce lee, streetfighter, old boy, & pink panther.

Despite the comic-book style editing and the way the film skips from one scene to the next with the aid of animated borders, ANGEL OF DEATH is really nothing more than yet another story about a female assassin out for revenge. It goes for a gritty, SIN CITY style moody look, but to be honest this has all been done so many times before that it feels rather passe.

ANGEL OF DEATH features stunt-woman turned actress Zoe Bell (DEATH PROOF) as a professional assassin who's out for revenge against the people who betrayed her. Along the way, she suffers the effects of a traumatic wound, as well as fighting her own conscience. The plot is light and the script lighter, as this is merely an excuse to string together a series of hard-hitting fight sequences.

The good news is that the fights are well staged, thankfully avoiding the dodgy shaky-cam work often used these days; they're also pleasingly violent. However, that's pretty much the only decent thing about ANGEL OF DEATH. The script is sub-par, the direction tries too hard to be atmospheric, and Bell just doesn't cut it as a leading actress. The producers win points for casting some B-movie favourites such as Lucy Lawless (SPARTACUS), Doug Jones (PAN'S LABYRINTH) and Ted Raimi (DARKMAN), but it's not enough to make this a good movie.

I realize that the whole idea for this movie comes from a comic book. Even so, in order to follow this film it requires a person to turn off his brain and accept some totally ridiculous scenarios. For example, the main character is an assassin by the name of "Eve" (played by Zoe Bell) who has a 6-inch knife embedded in her skull during an assassination attempt. She manages to complete her mission and stumbles out to a waiting get-away car all the same. She is taken to a mob doctor who performs the very delicate surgery by simply pulling the knife out by hand. She then recuperates for a few days and within no time is falling from a high-rise building onto a car and, apparently because there was another body underneath her to absorb the shock, gets up and walks away. Not long afterward she is involved in several fights which include having her head slammed repeatedly on a floor. All of this just after having a knife pulled from her brain. Yeah, right. At any rate, while there is plenty of action I would have preferred less quantity and more plausible quality. The characters were established well enough but the acting left much to be desired. Essentially, this is a film that has no humor and absolutely no realism. Everything hinges on hand-to-hand combat and even the pauses in between are only there to set the stage for the next violent sequence. No doubt there are some who enjoy this kind of movie and probably can't wait for the inevitable sequel or television series. Personally, it doesn't matter that much to me.

Ed Brubaker is a name to know in comics, but it should also be known in movies. Hopefully this will be a good calling card for him to get more work, or for more of his comics to reach the screen. While he's usually known for his spin on Captain America, he also has a series of hard-hitting hard-boiled comics called 'Criminal' (at the moment, I think, there's three volumes in all). Angel of Death follows along on the heels of those latter comics, and what he delivers here with this script is like an updating of a pulpy story that might have been found back in the 1950s put to film - only, of course, far less violent and expletive or on occasion trippy. It's like a Sin City yarn if it took itself not quite as much as a parody. And it works, mostly.

And another good thing about it, with its story about a hit-woman (Zoe Bell) who after getting a knife stabbed in her head and surviving- and becoming a loose cannon and seeing visions of a young girl she accidentally killed "telling her" to hit the entire mob organization around her- is that it leads on tough-movie dialog, kick-ass fight scenes and a really superb leading lady. Previously one could see Bell as a stunt-woman in Kill Bill or as herself, sorta, in Death Proof. But here she proves she can hold her own in dramatic scenes (maybe not quite her Uma Thurman counterpart but close enough) and seeing her fight is really extraordinary.

In fact, if you're just looking for a better-than-average direct-to-DVD action flick that chalks up a load of mob-movie/detective clichés, and don't know or care about Brubaker's name on the DVD, it's still worth watching. The fights are gritty and realistic, and the direction compliments these moments of torrid psycho-drama with Bell's knack for knocking someone's head in or any other kind of clever way of killing at a moment's notice. The film sometimes goes into a comic-book-panel kind of mis-en-scene, like if Zoe Bell's character is in a room walking around we'll see three different 'panels' of this. It's creative, if a little overused (and not so original if one's seen Ang Lee's Hulk). And, as a more obvious complaint, with the exception of Doug Jones and Lucy Lawless most of the cast is just 'meh', not terrible but nothing special.

But pick it up if you're roving around your video rental or if netflix gives the recommendation. You'll be surprised how much 78 minutes can go in delivering a hard-knock story of hard kills and harder consequences.