Alicia I love this movie so much

SunnyHello Nice effects though.

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Keeley Coleman The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Mr-Fusion The only thing I'd known about "Angel Heart" before watching it was that Mickey Rourke plays a hard-luck private eye in an '80s noir. Terror noir's more like it; this thing crosses genres like nobody's business. It is a detective story, but also a plunge into the muddied waters of New Orleans voodoo culture, and the underworld plays a huge part, but to say anything beyond that is giving the movie away. A lot of this movie is creepy imagery, and its pacing is leisurely, but the draw is that you're just as befuddled as Rourke.And *then* Alan Parker hits you square in the mouth with the twist ending; unfurling in not one, but two different surprises. Words can't really describe the scares one feels when witnessing bleeding walls or a baby with Thriller eyes, but those chills are genuine. And I don't normally sit through the end credits, but I did here; til the very end.I just couldn't look away.8/10

disinterested_spectator One of the problems with the story of Faust, the man in the German legend who sold his soul to the Devil, is that we never understood why anyone would make such a foolish bargain in the first place. A few decades of wealth, power, fame, and sex in exchange for an eternity of suffering the fires of Hell? Evil may be fascinating, but stupidity never is, and we quickly lose interest in the fate of anyone dumb enough to do that. The story fares much better when understood in the allegorical sense, of course, but it is always better if a story makes sense literally if it is to have much value figuratively.This movie solves that problem. Johnny Liebling is a crooner who thinks he knows a way to trick Satan. He makes a pact with him, in which Satan gets Johnny's soul in exchange for fame as a singer, under the name Johnny Favourite. Having made the deal and benefited from it, he then performs a ritual that involves cutting the heart out of a soldier and eating it. By so doing, Johnny is able to substitute the soldier's soul for his own, the result being that the soldier's soul will have to suffer the fires of Hell, while Johnny's soul does not. The soldier's name is Harold Angel, suggesting his innocence, of course. As part of the ritual, the soldier's dog tags are sealed up in vase. Only if Johnny himself opens the vase will the ritual be undone. Because Satan wants Johnny's soul and not Angel's, he must trick Johnny into breaking open the vase.When World War II breaks out, Johnny is drafted and subsequently suffers an injury, which causes him to have amnesia. He spends some time in a hospital, but his friends get him out. Not knowing what to do with him, they simply drop him off in a crowd of people on New Year's Eve. As a result of Johnny's confused memory about swapping souls with Harold Angel, he comes to believe that he is Harold Angel, and eventually starts working as a private detective under that name.Ten years after the war, which is when the movie starts, this Harold Angel is hired by Louis Cyphre (Lucifer) to find Johnny Favourite. Angel does not realize it, but he has been hired by the Devil to find himself. We do not realize it either, at this point, and we are encouraged by the movie to like Angel and to identify with him. He seems to be basically a nice guy. As he starts investigating, he begins experiencing disturbing images from the past. Little by little, he begins to suspect the truth. He is horrified at the idea that he might be Johnny Favourite, and having come to like him and identify with him, we are horrified too.In his desperation to assure himself that he is who he thinks he is, he breaks open the vase, and the dog tags of the real Harold Angel fall out. The spell is broken. At this point, Louis Cyphre appears, announcing that Johnny's soul now belongs to him. Finally, recent memories that Johnny had distorted are replaced by accurate ones, and he is forced into the realization that he has murdered several people.Because Johnny thought he had a way to trick the Devil, this story works on a literal plane. And by making us like him as Harold Angel and identify with him, the movie forces us to realize that we too may not be as good as we like to think we are, that we too have something inside us that is evil.But a remark made by Louis Cyphre gives this Faustian story a new twist. Cyphre says that Johnny was doomed the minute he cut that boy's heart out. In other words, all that dabbling in black magic and making a pact with the Devil was just so much hocus-pocus. In itself, it was harmless nonsense, and Johnny would never have gone to Hell for that. It was only when he did something truly evil, when he murdered that soldier, that Johnny was damned. By this remark, Cyphre links the literal understanding of this story with its allegorical one.

alexlbrattsev Alan Parker has established himself as a versatile master which can cope with a prison parable based on real events («Midnight Express», 1978) or a youth musical («Fame», 1980) and the film adaptation of the rock opera («Pink Floyd The Wall», 1982) or a dramatic story about the fate of the soldiers with the "Vietnam syndrome"(«Birdy», 1984), to the end of the decade, based on the novel by William Hjortsberg «Fallen Angel» (1978), made ​​his most gloomy and atmospheric a film in which "the biggest hope and biggest disappointment of 80s" - actor Mickey Rourke, who is at the peak of creative forms, played his best role of his career. «Angel Heart» became the quintessential postmodern exercise Parker styles. The film, which began as an urban noir in the scenery of New York, quickly turns to the mystical path of detective, changing geography and immersing narrative stuffy Southern Gothic's macabre of New Orleans (one of the most famous scenes in the film Parker pays tribute to the creativity of Andrei Tarkovsky and his masterpiece «The Mirror») to the finale taxied to Revelation: insight to the protagonist (and with it, and to the audience) comes too late in the literal sense - Angel really is an angel, only Fallen Angel. The entire film is agonizing attempts restless soul Angel defer its verdict. But like any self-respecting noir, he was doomed from the beginning, long before the meeting with the infernal Louis Cyphre an impressive performance by Robert De Niro. Herein lies the paradox of film noir genre - the sinner is committed to the Lord prescribed redemption, but in vain. Fan blades (one of the main visual symbols of the film), like the wheel of history, continue to cyclic rotation, only the acceleration time is almost tangible stuffiness inevitable fate, and a lift to the scaffold is already waiting, just press the call button.

LeonLouisRicci This is an Extremely Disturbing Film. Nothing is On Screen to Lighten the Mood, in Fact the Mood is Relentlessly Dark, Dirty, and Disheveled. Mickey Rourke's Harry Angel makes Colombo Look GQ-Neat. He is a Mess in a Mess of a Case that Involves Alternate Identities, Voodoo Occultism, Satan Worship, Murder, and as in Most Private Eye Film Noirs, a Missing Person.This is a Neo-Noir with Supernatural and Horror Elements, Psychological Aberrations and some of the Grittiest Settings this side of a Bourbon Street from Hades. Director Alan Parker's Stylistic Excess is on Full Display in this Gut-Wrenching Horror Film Hybrid with a Bloody Template and Characters Straight Out of the Carnival Side Show.It is not an Easy Film to Watch. There are Many Unsettling Scenes and some Very Creepy Goings On. It Hits all the Right Notes and Delivers one of the Most Underrated Movies of Recent Times. The Terrible Tone was Probably too much for some Patrons and Critics because it just Never Lets Up and gets More Maniacal and Morbid as the Movie moves along.If it is Film-Noir, Horror, and the Supernatural You Seek, Look no where else, this is an Acidic, Atrophying, Amalgamation of Genres that is Bathed in Blood and takes no Prisoners. The Sharp Angles and Cutting Cinema-Graphic Frames are Shadowed in Dread and there is No Escape for the Living or the Dead.