Angel Heart (1987)

"...full of striking, sensual, and frightening images...  Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide

Editor's Note In Alan Parker's ANGEL HEART, based on the novel FALLING ANGEL by William Hjortsberg, a New York City gumshoe is hired to find an aging blues singer. Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) follows clues from the ominous ghettos of Harlem to the witchy backwoods of Louisiana, where he takes up with Epiphany Proudfoot (Lisa Bonet), the beautiful young daughter of a voodoo priestess, whom he believes will be able to shed light on the growing mystery surrounding the missing musician. As Angel closes in on the truth of the case, his contacts start turning up dead. He begins to suspect he might be next. Parker (MISSISSIPPI BURNING) threads a commentary on the limitations of modern Western society into his sensual, suspenseful thriller. As the story unfolds, Angel relies less and less on his failing, overwhelmed rational mind (and handgun) and more on Epiphany's ancient mojo. Rourke captures the unraveling protagonist perfectly, and Bonet adds an erotic and mysterious edge with her performance. Robert De Niro is both funny and malevolent as Angel's mysterious client, Louis Cyphre. Shimmering with a beguiling mist of the macabre, ANGEL HEART provides an unexpectedly haunting dose of gothic noir.

	Charlotte Rampling
	Lisa Bonet
	Mickey Rourke
	Robert De Niro
	Alan Parker - Director
	Alan Parker - Writer
	Michael Seresin - Director of Photography
	Robert Dattila, et al. - Producer
	Trevor Jones - Musical Score
	William Hjortsberg - Based On Novel By

Harry Angel is a 1950s gumshoe hired by a dark stranger to search for the perpetrator of a string of grisly murders leading from New York to the voodoo cults of backwoods New Orleans. Each step Angel takes in this film noir nightmare brings him nearer to the heat of hell. Variety
"...A mightily absorbing mystery that also represents the best sustained filmmaking of director Alan Parker..." 03/04/1987

Los Angeles Times
"...It is a movie cool to the eye....It is the film's cumulative atmosphere that builds its mounting sense of doom..." 03/06/1987 p.C1

Total Film
"...With spine-twisting atmosphere, oodles of sly wit and a nightmare-birthing ending..."

Sight and Sound
"...A definitive 1980s period piece..." 03/01/2001 p.62

Rolling Stone
"[Rourke] gives off a vibe of mangy cool..." 06/10/2004 p.103

Total Film
4 stars out of 5 -- "[I]t's still a kick to see the two Method men lock acting antlers -- particularly with both at the peak of their pomp." 08/01/2006 p.110

Uncut
4 stars out of 5 -- "ANGEL HEART grows richer with each viewing, especially in its autumnal palette." 09/01/2006 128

Ultimate DVD
4 stars out of 5 -- "ANGEL HEART duly remains a well-regarded Faustian puzzle of a film." 09/01/2006 p.213

Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
It has the unsettled logic of a nightmare, in which nothing fits and everything seems inevitable and - Roger Ebert