![]() ![]() His odyssey in "Angel Heart" takes him from New York to Algiers, La., a town across from New Orleans that makes the fleshpots of Bourbon Street look like Disneyland. By the end, he is a man whose nerves are screaming for help. He looks unshaven, unwashed, hung over and desperate, and that's at the beginning of the film, before things start to go wrong. No other actor, with the possible exception of France's Gerald Depardieu, has made such a career out of being a slob. Rourke occupies the center of the film like a violent unmade bed. Given what we eventually discover about the character, it's a wicked homage. De Niro must have had fun preparing for the character: He uses a neatly trimmed black beard, slicked-back hair and tricks of lighting and makeup to make himself look uncannily like Martin Scorsese, his favorite director. The De Niro character sets the tone, with his sharp, pointed fingernails and his elegant black suits. ![]() The scene is consistent with the whole film, which is sensuous and depraved. In the context of the movie, the blood makes perfect sense, although the scene had had to be trimmed to qualify the movie for an R rating. They meet in a leaky hotel room during a rainstorm, and while they make love the raindrops from the ceiling turn to blood. ![]() He enjoys what timid folks might call stylistic excess, and that's what got him in trouble with the MPAA ratings board over a scene involving Rourke and Lisa Bonet, who plays a young Louisiana woman who holds the secrets of the past. Parker's films are always made with great gusto, as if he were in up to his elbows and taking no hostages look for example at " Midnight Express," " Fame" (1980) and " Pink Floyd: The Wall." After "Angel Heart," he can cross two off his list: private eye movies and supernatural horror films. The movie is by Alan Parker, a director who has vowed to work in every genre. A few things make it different: a sly sense of humor, good acting and directing, and a sudden descent into the supernatural as Harry Angel discovers the horrifying true nature of his investigation. This sounds like a million other private eye movies, and, in a way, it is. ![]()
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