Outstanding performances, Chris Menges expressive, painterly photography, an eloquently humane text, Neil Jordan's stylish, sporadically cruel 80s debut retains all of its dramatic intensity, this eternally lustrous 'Angel' is exceptionally refined cinema. The youthful, strikingly handsome, Stephen Rae, is magnetic, his desire for vengeance manifestly feral, and recognizably human. The gifted, passionate, profoundly insecure musician fatefully switching his cherished saxophone's mellifluous song for the sinister Stentorian discords of a machine gun appears strangely justified; and yet, his inexorable decent into a hell of his own making is well deserved.
Artfully directed, and undeniably wonderful, Neil Jordan's elegiac drama is emphatically a product of its turbulent times, with threats of sectarian reprisals omnipresent throughout and, yet, somehow it also feels miraculously timeless; a lively, emotionally complex world of rousing music, ceaselessly shifting light and shade, the profane carnality of murder, and the euphoria of deeply felt love. Whether bathed in hot neon or the cooler, earthier tones of Ireland's mythical countryside, Jordan's captivating aesthetic is remarkably assured, earnest, and profoundly moving,'Angel' remains unleavened cinematic poetry. Andy's retribution is bluntly expressed in an almost prosaic manner; swift, brutal, frequently haphazard, even shorn of all its fetishized glamour, the dark allure of his violence remains utterly compelling.
