Angel Heart (1987)
Cast: Mickey Rourke, Robert de
Niro, Lisa Bonet
Director: Alan Parker
It’s exciting to see a movie with
mystery and suspense right from the beginning to end of end credits. Fight Club, Seven and Mulholland
drive are few examples to mention. It is even more exciting when a favorite
actor has acted in it even if it is a small role. Angel Heart is one such, a
relatively unknown and underrated cult movie. The film has Mickey Rourke in
the lead role and my favorite star Robert de Niro in special appearance, the reason why I took
special interest to watch it (I am a diehard fan of de Niro!!).
Angel Heart is a perfect blend of
mystery, horror and detective genre. The plot is set few years after
the end of World War II, in the 1950s in which Harold ‘Harry’ Angel (Mickey Rourke) is
a private detective from Brooklyn. He is hired
by a wealthy but quite mysterious man Louis (de Niro) to find a singer named Johnny
Favorite whether he is dead or alive. Throughout the course of his
investigation, things get more and more bizarre when Harry unfolds something
crucial and there is another knot waiting for him to tie around his neck, and
get him into mess as if he is going to be transported to another world which
has no return path.
Adapting the novel Fallen Angels, director
Alan Parker has done a meticulous job of setting the extremely dark and scary environment
full of secrets. It is a horror movie without any cheap scares. But the real
scare elements are the visual and the music score. The visual presentation is distinctive and well matching to the film’s
environment. The soundtrack scored by Trevor Jones is breathtaking, eerie and builds tension. The script is good with some really catchy
dialogues. These aspects are well synchronized and leave the audience
anticipating what may be an unusual and unexpected twisted ending.
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| Robert de Niro in Angel Heart |
The film has a powerful acting. Rourke
takes the lead as a chain smoking, least bothered private detective, giving a
tremendous acting showing us the horror through his eyes. Initially he is reluctant to accept the job, but eventually agrees when Louis is ready to a lucrative sum. The ‘special
appearance’ by de Niro as Louis is much special that, with only 10 to 15 minutes of screen
presence out of 112 minutes duration, de Niro had given a stunning acting. This is one
of his best in the line of Taxi Driver, The Godfather II, though not much popular among many. For those who have
seen him as a gangster all these years in most of his movies, you people can
see him in a completely different character, a role
that he has done neither before nor after this film. When there is a slight lag
in the screenplay, the gap is superbly filled by de Niro and Rourke’s sparkling
acting. Rest of the cast also does their part quiet satisfactorily, mainly Lisa
Bonet as the voodoo girl and Harry’s lover Epiphany, and Charlotte Rampling as
Margaret, a fortune teller.
I wonder how movies like this are
underrated despite having near perfection in almost every aspect. Those who
like the above mentioned genre and the fans of de Niro who haven’t seen it yet,
will surely enjoy this thrill ride. Please do watch fully till the end credits are over.
My Rating: 8.8/10
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