Starring Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, Lisa Bonet, Charlotte Rampling, Stocker Fontelieu

(8-Exceptional Film)

Dark. Evocative. Haunting.

There are two movie formulas that always leave me satisfied. One belongs to the western genre: a town bullied by outlaws finds help from a vigilante outsider. The second is the private eye subgenre: a world-weary gumshoe accepts a seemingly innocuous case that develops into the biggest case of his career. I love mystery and femme fatales and tough-talking men and all that comes with this latter plot. Angel Heart, starring Mickey Rourke and Robert De Niro, is such a film. Beginning in 1950s New York, Rourke plays Harry Angel, hired by De Niro’s Louis Cyphre to track down a lost jazz singer named Johnny Favorite. His investigation leads him to New Orleans and a cast of characters involved in the dark arts including the beautiful Evangeline Proudfoot (Bonet). As the plot thickens, Angel Heart morphs from a private eye drama to a supernatural thriller, and the ending, absurd and abstract as it is, floored me. Mickey Rourke is a special actor; inherently interesting, exciting, with great emotional range. His revelation scene opposite a terrifically understated De Niro is a tour de force.

-Walter Tyrone Howard-

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