Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Executscan Expected more

Burkettonhe This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

Benas Mcloughlin Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

aaronable14 A very underrated masterful piece of art. This is my kind of film. It analyses, dissect, and expose the human psyche. There is no good and bad in the film, you make up your mind about that. There is no unblemished hero character in the film; only ordinary people doing extraordinary actions in unique circumstances. The film illustrates the beauty of human heart. Even though the film is Japanese, it doesn't do what the traditional Hollywood films do in war films involving America; the film, in respect of the war issue is neutral. It uses the war as a background to the main concepts addressed by the film. However, the war aspect is not entirely neglected, rather it is dealt with from a neutral perspectives.

MartinHafer I really enjoyed this film and strongly recommend it. However, there are two groups for which I would not recommend the film--those who do not want to see appropriate but graphic violence as well as kids. While the film is at times very sexual and violent, it did NOT seem gratuitous in the least."Red Angel" occurs during the Japanese war against China and begins in 1939 as a nursing student sets out for the front. Her experiences are quite horrible at times and it does not try to sensationalize or exploit the awfulness of war. In fact, it's very sensitive and often avoids super-explicitness--particularly in a traumatic rape scene and scenes involving consensual sex--and I really appreciated how the film makers worked hard not to show too much while still making the story realistic. But, as these are NOT the best topics for young kids (no matter how well handled), I would say this is a film you might want to see WITH your teen but not with younger audience members.A few comments about the rape and consensual sex in the film. First, I was shocked how ill-disciplined and rather animalistic the soldiers were sometimes shown in the film. Rape and avoiding action by faking sick were NOT positive depictions of their own soldiers--and I am sure many in Japan were provoked by showing such non-heroic images. Second, the entire plot line involving the nurse having sex with a soldier who lost both his arms is fascinating--and deals with something you just don't hear about in other films. You just have to see this touching but heart-breaking portion of the film for yourself to see what I mean.Overall, the acting, writing and production were outstanding. What I particularly loved is how the film did not go where I expected...repeatedly. I also liked (and many will hate) that the film was NOT a happily ever after sort of thing, as WWII was NOT a happily ever after event--particularly for the Japanese. Brilliant and among the better Japanese WWII films. For an even better but far more depressing and adult film, try "Fires On The Plain"--perhaps one of the very best and most realistic war films ever.

ProperCharlie 'Akai tenshi' is one of those films you see and you suddenly realise where so many strands of modern cinema have their roots. The images on the screen morph into that latest multiplex blockbuster, art-house cult or imported favourite. Here is the ancestor of the recent Japanese horror boom. There is a 'war is hell'/'madness of war' theme of a distinctly Vientnamesque cast. There's drug dependency, gang rape and there's more than a flavour of Tarantino. And this was made in 1966.The start is where the grotesquerie starts. This is a field hospital in a bloody war. A charnel house with en suite morgue. The doctors struggle to keep up. Buckets fill with amputated limbs, often chopped off with out anaesthetic. Worse still the sounds of a surgical knife going through a thigh followed by a bone saw through femur. And concordant with the obscenities of mass butchery, the emotional detachment of the doctors, nurses, orderlies and soldiers staffing the hospital. This is hell. It's not just the gore either. There is body horror. Multiple amputees struggle to cope with their new status. Bandaged stumps are waggled and examined by their owners. The camera doesn't flinch though the audience might.The only women at the hospital are the nurses and they are surrounded by large numbers of traumatised, men who've recently been trying to kill other men. Order is poorly maintained, the social structures within the hospital are on the edge of collapse. It seems gang rape of the nurses is the rule rather than the exception, something that the protagonist experience very early on in the film. Rarely is this side of men's nature put on film. Recently I can only think of '28 Days Later'. It is an important question to ask. Will groups of men always act like this? Why? Are all men are rapists, or do all women fear that they are? Unfortunately the film doesn't answer this, but is content to add in as another level of hell that Nurse Nishi must endure. She endures it rather too stoically.Underlying all of the horror and gore there is a strong undercurrent of sexuality. And the films seems to wear its maleness on it sleeve in this department. There are all sorts of fantasies from dark to pitch black. Cross-dressing, bondage, submission, sex with amputees, gang-rape. There is a rather richer fantasy of the woman bringing a man back to potency purely with the power of her sexuality. Nurse Nishi is a strongly sexual character and largely in charge of her own desires, except in the rape scenes. Ultimately this is an exploitation picture, but a very classy one.The best part of this film is just how little is shown for the impact that you get. There are one or two gratuitous shots of gore and under lifted skirts. Mostly though the horror and erotic content is implied or shot well. There is no nudity, Nurse Nishi is viewed naked in shadow or through mosquito nets. Most of the horror is in the sound, the writing of the victims on the surgical table, the struggles of a single nurse against large groups of men, or simply the word: 'cholera'. This is a disturbingly erotic and exploitative tale of sex, madness, war that will haunt you in many ways.

jmaruyama While most Japanese movie fans may be familiar with director Masumura Yasuzo's eerie "Mojyu" (AKA Blind Beast; 1969), "Akai Tenshi" (Eng. Lit. - Red Angel) is one of the director's more somber films. Set against the backdrop of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45) Masumura focuses on the life of a newly transferred Japanese Army medical nurse Nishi Sakura (Wakao Ayako) and the horrors she sees and experiences as she tries to cope with the human casualties of that senseless war. As Sakura sadly narrates, on the first day of her transfer to the army hospital where she is stationed, she is brutally gang raped by wounded soldiers from the front. Her tragic life doesn't get any easier as she is soon sent to an outpost even closer to the front-line. There she sees even more horrific carnage and despair. The story gets somewhat melodramatic as Sakura's encounters various patients at the outpost (Sakura meets one of the soldiers who gang raped her months earlier but who is now on the verge of dying. Sakura also meets with another soldier who has had both his arms amputated in an explosion. He tells Sakura that he was newly married before the war and now feels that he can never face his wife again. Sakura nurtures the soldier and eventually sleeps with him out of pity of his plight). In the course of her duties Sakura befriends the stoic doctor/surgeon Dr. Okabe (Ashida Shinsuke) who was head of a hospital before the war started and is now Chief Medical Officer for the Army. Although much older than she, Sakura finds herself hopelessly in love with the doctor whom strangely reminds her of her own father who had passed away when she was a child. To escape the realities of the war, Okabe has become addicted to morphine, which he has Sakura administer. Eventually Sakura helps Okabe break this addiction and soon becomes his lover. The two lovers are soon transferred to the front-line where they have to tend to a group of cholera-infected soldiers. The village that they are held up in is soon attacked by Chinese Military forces and Okabe and Sakura say their last goodbyes before getting separated. Miraculously though Sakura survives the attack but tragically finds Okabe dead. While the film touches upon a number of exploitative elements, it is surprisingly very conservative in its handling and depictions of the more salacious aspects (there is very little nudity and the sex scenes are done tastefully and without the usual gratuitousness expected from these films). The film definitely does not condone the acts of the Japanese Military of the time and goes out of its way to show the human casualties of the conflict, often in very graphic detail. War is hell and this film hammers that point across in its depictions of the war wounded and the psychological trauma these soldiers suffer.