ANGEL HEART

 With Alan Parker I've either blown very hot or very cold. His best films, ("Shoot the Moon", "The Commitments", "Mississippi Burning") are contemporary classics while at other times I've found his work to be tasteless and even somewhat offensive. There was a streak of homophobia running through both "Fame" and "Midnight Express" that I disliked while on an initial viewing I found that piece of pulp "Angel Heart" sleazy and exploitative. Of course, all these films are superbly made; if nothing else Parker was a master craftsman and if you were prepared to give yourself over to their sometimes questionable content you might even say his films were highly watchable entertainments.

Still, I'm not one to hold a grudge so recently I gave "Angel Heart" another chance and this time round, giving myself over to his blend of sophistication, embodied by Michael Seresin's superb cinematography and a deliciously sly turn from Robert DeNiro, and the audacity of its really rather ludicrous plot, I found a lot here to enjoy. This is a film that does what it says on the tin; it's an old-fashioned horror movie given a beautiful new coat of paint and at its centre there's Mickey Rourke looking like a fallen angel, ('Falling Angel' was the title of the source novel). Rourke wasn't just beautiful back in the day but he could act, too and could even carry a movie. He certainly goes a long way to carrying this one as does Parker who is clearly enjoying teasing his audience even if the clues to the final twist are fairly obvious from the start. In the end this is just cinematic junk food but junk food that is really rather tasty.