Angel Heart (1987)

Directed by Alan Parker. Starring Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, Lisa Bonet, Charlotte Rampling, Brownie McGhee, Elliott Keener, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Stocker Fontelieu, Dann Florek, Elizabeth Whitcraft, Michael Higgins. [R]

Seedy, two-bit 1950s private dick Harry Angel (Rourke) is hired by the enigmatic Louis Cyphre (De Niro) to track down a missing singer who went by the professional name of Johnny Favorite (not to be confused with Johnny Handsome, as that would come later for Mickey), but Angel’s investigation turns into a corpse-strewn nightmare where he can no longer trust anyone he meets or anything he sees. Because every story turn, from Cyphre’s true identity to the person responsible for the murders, can be seen coming in advance, it’s a movie that lives or dies on its atmosphere, its images, its intangibles, and on the one hand, it’s a stylish exercise in using voodoo/Satanic mechanics to stir the already overseasoned stew pot, but on the other hand, the mystery details are too busy engineering belabored chess moves for the overwhelmed detective to ever get him to simply drift through the alluring promises and terrifying discoveries, a place where pure filmmaking can take over and mesmerize the viewer. Earned some overblown controversy when first released for a sex scene that needed to be trimmed by ten seconds to avoid an X-rating, but there’s nothing all that steamy about it—erotic or violent, when blood enters the fray of heaving bodies—to make much of a fuss. Rourke’s scene partner during that episode, Lisa Bonet, was making her film debut (then a cast member on “The Cosby Show”), and was publicly criticized for choosing the provocative role by that scion of moral decency named…Bill Cosby.

61/100