Black magic and satanic ritual had their top-class cinematic due in Alan Parker’s
1987 thriller Angel Heart. The film stars Mickey Rourke (9
½ Weeks, Diner) as private detective Harry
Angel, Lisa Bonet (from television’s The Cosby Show) as voodoo priestess
Epiphany, and Robert DeNiro as the shadowy and powerful Louis Cyphre. The film
has now arrived on a Special Edition DVD courtesy of Lions Gate Home Entertainment.
The plot adopts the old story of a gumshoe that starts out on a seemingly harmless
assignment only to be propelled into a myriad of danger. What makes Angel Heart
exceptional is the amount of nightmarish surrealism and manifest decadence that
the film occupies. The film is dripping with atmosphere and the story progression
takes flight in directions that you don’t expect it will go. Harry Angel
takes one long, spiraling decline into an abyss of self-destruction, getting
stuck in chasms he can’t seem to climb out of. Little by little, the situations
get worse for him.
The film’s setting takes place in New York 1955 and begins with Harry
getting obtained by Cyphre’s services to track down a missing person by
the name of Johnny Favorite. Before the war, Johnny was a popular musician in
the South with many followers and admirers. Ostensibly, Johnny has an unpaid
debt with Louis Cyphre and hasn’t been seen in twelve years. The investigation
leads Harry into the world of New Orleans voodoo culture. Several of Johnny’s
acquaintances are tracked down and bequest circumstantial information about
his whereabouts.
Strange accidents and mysterious murders seem to follow Harry along on his case.
Nearly every lead Harry takes a trail of blood or self-damning evidence dribbles
behind him. Harry unexpectedly becomes a primary suspect in multiple murders.
He bears witness to forbidden sacrifice rituals of a voodoo cult. He becomes
a central player to supernatural activity. And he falls in love with the priestess
and partakes in one of cinema’s strangest and most blood-drenched lovemaking
sequences.
Every now and then Cyphre pays Harry a visit to oversee his progress. Proving
the truism that every man has his price, Harry continues with the case despite
all the elicited trouble that it is causing him. He carries on because Cyphre
is willing to pay whatever it takes to get the job done. Harry knows less about
who he is than his accomplices know at the stretch, because he violates every
professional code that he has stood for.
As Cyphre, DeNiro only filmed for six days on this film but is totally immersed
into his character. He dons in black suits and has slick black hair, and walks
around with a cane not as an assist to a handicap but because it symbolizes
his wealth and prestige. In his vainness, Cyphre makes demanding requests look
very simple – he is powerful without having to shift himself to accommodate
others. He firmly directs Harry to continue onto his treacherous journey, and
has no bones about whether all this unlawful bedlam will come back his way to
harm him.
That makes Harry his patsy. As Harry, Rourke is crucially strong in the film
by acting in on his own unyielding narcissism and imprudence. Rourke, at one
time, was great at playing these kinds of characters that don’t question
their own sloppy judgment until it is too late to turn back. It is ironic that
Rourke himself did not have much interest in acting at the time, because he
was becoming bored with the profession. But he becomes an electric character
in this film, a very tragic casualty of his own uncouth conceit.
Everything in the plot builds with a realistic attention by the director and
the film’s resolution wraps up everything at the end that makes everything
before it make inevitable translucent sense. The jazz-noir music is especially
creepy and the bayou locations are exotic and perilous. Angel Heart
is one of the most underrated movies of the 1980’s.
On the DVD’s special features, you will find a number of cool insider
documentaries on the world of voodoo. “The History of Voodoo in New Orleans,”
“Voodoo…the Truth: a look at Voodoo in the Media,” “Dance
as Worship,” “Ashé: an Informational Look at the African
Spirit Forces,” and “Voodoo Macumba Dance Ensemble,” are among
the documentaries.
As for extra materials about the film, there are a number of featurettes and
interviews, both original behind the scenes footage as well as new retrospective
interviews, with director Parker, Bonet and Rourke. The volunteered ruminations
on the making of the film become repetitive, featuring some footage that could
have been easily excised. For Rourke fans, there is a 20-minute reflection by
the actor on his career, and a recounted tour through some of his career highlights.
Rourke is no-nonsense but also kind of spacey, although it is an overall engaging
retrospective.
On the director’s commentary, Parker admits that he hasn’t seen
the film since it was first released and his mental absence shows. Parker is
good at recounting some anecdotes but the commentary becomes fairly interminable.
In one of the oddest features ever to come to DVD, there is a “No Comment”
Commentary by Rourke (Apparently he was in the recording studio but couldn’t
think of anything interesting to say about his participation with the film).
The “No Comment” is presented in a nearly fifteen-minute video of
Rourke dodging questions. These kinds of DVD anomalies though make it all the
more enticing for those collectors looking for something different to store
in their DVD library.
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