Angel Heart : Aux portes de l'enfer

I was stunned at what this film did to me. An absolutely brilliant display of psychological horror. Alan Parker made the scariest film of the eighties, maybe the scariest film of the second half of the century with this picture. The hell with "Psycho", "Angel Heart" is where it's at if you want horror.

I don't know how Parker hasn't become the Hitchcock of his generation after this film. I know some of his other work - "Evita" and Mississippi Burning" are two films of his that I happen to think are pretty good. But they're nothing like this. What Parker does so well here, what he seems to get better than any other director I've noticed since this film was made, is how atmosphere makes a movie. He has a real sense of place and time that's a key component to making the terror of this movie real.

Aside from Parker's talents, there are three performances without which the movie just wouldn't work.

Robert de Niro gives the second best performance of his career here, right next to "Raging Bull", and even that's pretty close. I'm not even normally a huge fan of de Niro's - I mean, don't get me wrong, he's a legend, but I find most of the time that I'm less impressed with him than most people are. Not here. In this movie, de Niro makes the simple act of eating an egg into a treatise on mortal dread. He should have received the Oscar for this performance, no question about it.

Lisa Bonet - what happened to her? Every couple of years I'll see her in something like this or "High Fidelity", and she's got all this charisma - she really is a superb actress. What she does here is really interesting because you can see that it's very underdone, a lot of subtlety. Which is a strange way to go if you're playing a voodoo priestess. But she's very vulnerable here. I think it's a shame she didn't become the star she could have. I'd love to see more work from her.

Mickey Rourke is another resident of the "Where are they now?" file. I've heard more from him recently though. He's been making a comeback of sorts. He's actually the primary reason I rented this movie, because I saw him in Sean Penn's "The Pledge" and wanted to see more of his stuff. He's the third performance that makes this movie complete, and he's the one who really has the hardest job, who has to strap it to his back and get it across the finish line. His is also the most important job, because he needs to instill the terror in you. It's through his eyes that you witness these bizarre events, and it's his reaction that makes it all the more terrifying.

Again, brilliant. Can't say enough about it. The last thirty seconds or so kind of sucks (those of you who've seen it know what I'm referring to), but I can just turn it off before that. Oddly, it doesn't ruin what's come before.

"Angel Heart" deserves to be considered Alan Parker's masterpiece. The direction is truly amazing, as Parker drives us deeply through a meticulously prepared dark atmosphere, full of allegories and secret hints.

In "Angel Heart", we watch Mickey Rourke in his finest acting hour, who plays Harry Angel, a private investigator hired by the mysterious Louis Cyphre, depicted by the great Robert De Niro. Cyphre assigns Angel the task to find a guy named Johnny Favorite who has disappeared, with whom he has unsettled debts. The task is much harder than it first looks however, as Angel bumps into several murders in the process; and as if that were not enough, the quest makes him realize some very unpleasant truths about himself and Mr. Cyphre.

As noted before, both Rourke and De Niro are excellent in their roles; a high mark goes for the rest of the cast as well, with Lisa Bonnet standing out as charming and apocryphal Epiphany Proudfoot. Yet, the 10/10 mark for this film is definitely credited to Alan Parker's direction: It is his masterpiece.

And I can't believe I never threw my two cents in about this one. When I first saw Angel Heart, I thought it was going to be your regular old mystery. Like a Mamet or Spillane yarn about a down on his luck private investigator drawn into a web of lies and deceit… Oh yeah, it IS like that… and then some. I was completely drawn into this movie. I found it perfectly paced. And just like other movies of this type, could not see the end coming at all. However from the beginning it felt like something was kind of different about THIS yarn. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Kind of like the feeling you get as your walking out of the house and you just know you forgot something but you can't remember what. It was like that, a ‘nagging at the back of your brain' feeling. And then, oh boy! When all is revealed you wish you would have just left without what ever it was you were missing, ‘cause what you find is oh-so frightening. What a terribly wonderful story and what great direction. I can't think of anybody better that De Niro for the roll he played. If you own it: watch in again. If you haven't seen it, you must.

I do not go much for that Parker kind of stuff("Midnight express" ,albeit technically breathtaking was a little racist,"Shoot the moon" was a big bore,and you've got to be into Pink Floyd to appreciate such a work as "the wall")"Angel Heart " is a different matter,because it deals with the horror and fantasy genre.Against all odds,for someone who had never tackled this difficult genre,Parker succeeded magnificently.The screenplay is first-rate,with a strong story,with an ending you'll never guess (and I will not reveal it of course!)Including drugs,voodoo,sabbath ,intense love scenes,featuring a wonderful cast:Rourke,who had never been better (and never would)and a frighteningly deadpan DeNiro cast as Louis Cipher,this movie takes us along in a meandering,labyrinthine investigation in which private detective Rourke will find so dreadful things he won't escape unharmed. The supporting cast is excellent:Charlotte Rampling stays only a few minutes on the screen ,and yet,we remember her and her tea.The same goes for the junkie doctor.I'd tone it for one thing:the elevator scene might have been borrowed from an old French movie,"Huis clos",directed by Jacqueline Audry,from Jean-Paul Sartre's play(1956).

I'm not in the least surprised that other reviewers either love this or hate it to bits - I also bet that it's the younger users to whom the nature of the visual narrative of the film - the way it's all told to us, the viewer - may seem a bit dated. And to a point, they're right - "Angel Heart" is totally an eighties film, a film of the decade in which the movie world was discovering a new visual language in video and playfully indulged in experimenting with its new toy. It was literally speaking to a generation straight out of MTV classrooms and workshops and is in that sense very similar to stuff like "Betty Blue". And true enough, there is a lot to remark on what can today be seen as a slightly poseur-ish "one too many revolving fans, angularly lit staircases and heartbeat sounds in the soundtrack" kind of thing. However, "Angel Heart" does carry a tremendous amount of energy thanks to its imagery, which will stick to the viewer's mind in exactly the same way a sweaty shirt sticks to the body in sticky weather. Besides, the impeccably drawn cast led by Rourke does a truly remarkable job - that's beyond question - the sets are great, production design and cinematography are very evocative, the soundtrack is memorable and the story is one of the crucial ones. I personally love it.

Give it a go by all means.