Angel Heart

Giving people another reason to be afraid of anywhere located near New Orleans is Angel Heart, an effective and truly frightening horror movie that is easily one of my personal favorite movies of the 1980's.

Angel Heart stars Mickey Rourke (Sin City) as Harry Angel, a private investigator hired by Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro) to find a man named Johnny Love who hit it big years before and managed to skip out on Louis...avoiding any type of payments that were owed to him. So pretty much, Harry is paid a large sum of money to track down this guy so that he can pay Louis back. Sounds pretty easy right? Well, there are a few complications. Excluding the fact that Johnny Love seems virtually impossible to find, there's also the miniscule little issue of every witness that Harry speaks to being murdered directly after they answer Harry's questions, making local police wonder if Harry himself is behind these crimes. Not to mention that Harry's search takes him to New Orleans, where everyone and their mother has a personal relationship with the devil himself and would cut a chicken's throat in a second for him (I'M NOT KIDDING...YIKES).

Though Mickey Rourke definitely holds his own here as Harry Angel and is definitely captivating as he takes the audience on his mental and physical journey to solve the mystery and locate Johnny Angel, it's Robert De Niro as Louis Cyphre who completely steals the show here. He's certainly a co-star compared to Rourke, but during his scenes onscreen...he dominates every bit of your attention, completely erasing the fact that he's not the absolute protagonist in this movie. Cosby kid; Lisa Bonet also holds her own here, as the oversexualized witness that may know more than she's letting on about Johnny Love.

One of the strengths in this movie is how it's chilling even when the audience is seeing nothing. Don't get me wrong, the murders of the witnesses which include death by being choked with a penis, having the heart ripped out, and having a gun shoved where the sun will never shine are certainly scenes that I wouldn't call excessively gruesome, but the movie doesn't rely on its' graphic demises to get across a strong sense of tension, despair, and pure terror. It relies on the premise & surroundings as well. This is one of those movies where every character could possibly be up to no good, and I would definitely say this movie will keep you guessing up until the end, or at least...close to the end.

As for the ending which I will certainly not reveal...I would say it was executed pretty smoothly. As expected, it does have a twist but it's twisty enough to satisfy those who want to be surprised...but not so convoluted as to where it's just twisty just for the sake of being twisty while not making a ton of sense, which a lot of horror movies are quite guilty of. Angel Heart will chill you down to the very bone.

3/4