Fallen Angels

Fallen Angels 1 has three film noir -stories, each half an hour long, all created in the style of the 40's films. I got this because of Rickman (of course), but wasn't disappointed in any of the other stories either.The first story stars Peter Gallagher as a conman/cardplayer, and reminds very much of the cheap detective stories my father had. In this world nobody really works, everybody cons, even the nice old sweet couple Gallagher meets in a train and tries to win their money. Wrong move, of course, he gets thrown out in the middle of a desert and later picked up by a car driven by a newly married couple: a man who is a Bible printer and his gorgeous wife, Isabella Rossellini, who nags and nags until than man stops the car and.... Gallagher in is the middle of another plot. Unrealistically beautiful and dangerous women, sadistic killers, organized crime - the lot. A real 40's B-movie in 30 minutes.'Murder, obliquely' is why I wanted to see this. Laura Dern gets invited to meet a friend of her friends, Dwight (Rickman), and immediately knows, this is her first and final love. Though the man doesn't seem to be interested. They get interrupted by Rickman's lover, a well built redhead - and her new husband. In Rickman's mind the thing isn't over, so newlyweds exit after the woman has thrown all Rickman's gifts on his face. And a bit later they are again, apparently, lovers. Until Dern's innocent remark about a canceled concert breaks everything.'Murder, obliquely', directed by Cuaron, is different from the two other ones. Everything really happens somewhere else. What we see and hear are Dern's narrative and a couple of people reacting to hints. They are always inside, in doorways, half letting someone in but still keeping them out. Very little is said but Dern's narrative. I've never really liked Dern, but this time she was good. And Rickman... There's again that odd mix of soft, slow sensuality, cunning, cold, calculating intellect and a touch of vulnerability and sincerity (which may be even real). One starts thinking: "OK, he's not young and handsome (though I must admit I find his profile intriguing), but he probably could charm you before you realized what is happening, and kill you without anybody noticing you are dead - and he'd probably have a very good and justified reason for doing it, damn it!" So you don't wonder Dern's choice in the end, though you yourself start speculating: what then? is he serious? is he planning something else? Dern's way of repeating: "My first and final love" leaves a whole lot of options. And to me it reminds the end of Francis Iles' novel 'Before the fact', which I've always liked very much. Yes, this is a good buy for a Rickman-fan, though it doesn't give that many minutes of him.The third one is again a more active story, moving from city to city, from real live celebrities to the mob. Tim Matheson is Howard Hughes - an odd choice - and Gary Busey the guy, who works for him and Michael Cohen, hyperactivelly played by James Woods. Busey, too, is an odd choise for the guy who seems to have a decent heart somewhere, but everybody works rather fine.The story moves around a blond bombshell, whom both Hughes and Cohen want to find. But she isn't what she appears to be, though she worked as a prostitute. All the marks of a Bogart-type movie are here; the cynical lead character, criminals, mobsters, dead men turning up from all sorts of places, a beautiful, elusive woman, wanted by many and yet seemingly capable to take care of herself and have her own, cunning plans.Well, I liked these. I've always liked film noir and even with these modern actors (which sometimes make the stories come very close to a parody) and brilliant colours they were well made and amazingly loyal. I even liked the order, with calm, hinting 'Murder,obliquely' placed in between Bogart-style stories. A well deserved 4 stars.

Fallen Angels was Wong Kar Wai’s fifth film and dealt with two completely separate stories. Both deal with Wong’s favorite topic love. This time unrequited ones. Michelle Reis played a helper for the killer Wong Chi Ming (Leon Lai). The twist is the two never really meet and yet he was the only thing she ever thought about. The second is about a mute named Ho Chi-Mo (Takeshi Kaneshiro) who falls for a girl who always thinks about other men. I think Wong got too ambitious with this story however as it ends up going all over the place.Christopher Doyle did the cinematography and it was beautiful as usual. This time he laid down all kinds of very subtle shots. For instance in the opening Reis sets up a room for Wong and there’s an outside shot that shows the small room on one side and the street and passing train on the other. It’s like a split screen between the home and the outside world but it’s not because it’s one shot. The colors throughout the film are also put through a filter to give it a kind of cloudy dreamlike feel.The writing is top notch initially. There are many scenes that convey the relationship between Reis and Wong for instance like when Reis goes through Wong’s garbage after he’s done a job just to get a hint at what’s he’s been doing. It’s also very sexual which you wouldn’t expect when the two main characters don’t meet. Ho’s character on the other hand does one ridiculous thing after another like threatening people to eat his ice cream. It also offers a comparison between Wong’s violent life with plenty of scenes of him assassinating people versus Ho’s carefree existence.That being said the story gets real meandering. There’s a whole part of the movie in the second half about Wong and Ho that doesn’t seem necessary. Their relationships are over and they just go off in all different directions. Those parts could have been cut. Overall you have to take the good with the bad when it comes to Fallen Angeles.

Love this film for it's ground breaking cinematography from Christopher Doyle and creative vision of Wong Kar Wai. Just love this film, especially the closing scene.

A brilliant movie from the brilliant Wong Kar-Wai. Speedy delivery was great too

Fantastic film

'Fallen Angels' was the first Wong Kar-~Wai movie I had the pleasure to see: late as hell on BBC 2 as a teenager, and I was mesmerized by the wacky characters, casual, stuttering violence (in the style of John Woo) and the sheen of insufferable cool throughout. I later found out about the frankly rather amazing (and similarly super-stylistic) likes of 'Days of Being Wild', 'Happy Together' and 'Chungking Express', before the director reached even wider beauty and recognition with his blissful 'In The Mood For Love' and its sort-of-sequel '2046'. I was studying film at Uni when I saw 'Chungking Express' and fell ridiculously in love with it... to find 'Fallen Angels' was meant to conclude that movie as a third act. I feel it does a bit more than that. Right enough, Wong let the film stand alone. Nowadays, it still stands up against his - perhaps more celebrated - other work. It is incredibly striking, full of memorable characters, shots and sequences - perhaps none more so than the blatantly-nutty but well-meaning delinquent Ho Chi Moo (played, not by Jacky Cheung as I thought for ages, but 'Chungking's excellent Takeshi Kaneshiro) who has a neat way of revising late-night business practices. It has touches of the artistic, the cool, the kinky, the gripping, the sexy and the touching, in its various late-night scenarios. The recent, excellent DVD transfer also highlights the absolute joy and exhilaration of the cinematography, by Kar-Wai's acclaimed collaborator Christopher Doyle. Like much of Wong's work, it heavily utilizes pop music amidst an excellent soundtrack. It may also make you like the Flying Pickets version of 'Only You' against your will. Try watching the final scenes against the Pickets' performance on Top of The Pops while dressed as snowmen and my point may become clear. Alas, don't listen to the old farts who recommend it for 'fans of Hong Kong films or anime only'. This is visual, audible,emotional cinema.

I'm glad that I have watched Wong Kar Wai's master pieces 'chungking express' & 'in the mood for love' prior to watching this film. Unmistakeably a Kar Wai film, but unlike the previous two film mentioned, Fallen Angels felt disjointed; there are moments of brilliance, then moments of is there really any direction - just firing bullets hoping some hit the target. However, Wong Kar's style is so captivating and unique, that you feel like you're watching a master at work even when you don't truly like the finished product.