Reviews:Fallen Angels
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| ALTERNATE SYNOPSIS: Acknowledged throughout the world as one of the most important directors working today, Wong Kar-Wai (Happy Together, Ashes Of Time) has developed a signature style that employs bold, experimental use of photography, music, and editing to capture the tension of the approaching millenium. Originally intended to be a third story in his now classic Chungking Express, Fallen Angels has emerged as what some critics have come to consider his "quintessential work." Set in the neon-washed underworld of present-day Hong Kong, Fallen Angels intertwines two exhilarating tales of love and isolation. First, there's the unconsummated love affair between a contract Killer (Leon Lai Ming) and the ravishing female Agent (Michele Reis) who books his assignments and cleans up after his jobs. When the Killer decides that he must move on, he leaves her with only a coin for the jukebox and instructions to play song number 1818 - "Wang Ji Ta" ("Forget Him")... Ex-convict Ho (Takeshi Kaneshiro) stopped speaking at the age of five after eating a date-expired can of pineapple. He lives with his father, who runs a guesthouse where the Agent is in semi-permanent residence. He makes a living by re-opening shops that have closed for the night and intimidating customers into buying goods and services from him. After an awkward romance with a girl named Cherry, Ho finds himself all the more alone... Wong Kar-Wai brings these parallel storylines together in a blitz of ultra-hip style and classical cinematic sensibilities. A poet of modern alienation, Kar-Wai's universe is populated with characters both dark and comic, magical and existential; Fallen Angels is both a vie at revolutionary cinema and an homage to a love for movies. |
| A tale (or rather two) of small-time criminals in Hong Kong. One concerns a disenchanted hitman (Lai) and his agent (Reis) whose relationship falls apart after Lai meets an old flame (Mok). The other centers around a mute (Kaneshiro), who spends his time breaking into stores at night and running them as if they were his.
Wong Kar-Wai's films have always divided audiences. Many people in Hong Kong hate his films -- there have been tales of audiences booing and throwing things at the screen during showings of his films. On the other hand, Wong's films have found a rabid cult following around the world, mostly because of Wong's masterful use of filmic narrative devices as a method of character study. Sadly, though, Fallen Angels really isn't "masterful" in any way. It comes off as unfocused, rambling, and perhaps more than a little self-indulgent. Perhaps the biggest detriment to Fallen Angels are the characters themselves. There's really nothing of interest about them. Originally, this movie was supposed to be part of Wong's excellent Chungking Express and the characters, while they might have worked in a smiller role, are too empty to be of interest for two hours. Wong and his cinematographer Christopher Doyle pull out all the stops to make a nice-looking movie. The images of Michelle Reis caught in deep thought are some of the most striking put to celluoid. But when the characters are so vapid and ultimately devoid of humanity, it's hard to care about anything in the film. There's a bit of John Woo-inspired gunplay, complete with dual handguns and slow motion, but it comes off as hollow and maybe a bit exploitative. Maybe that's the point that Wong was trying to make. I don't care. There comes a point where the medium tends to overpower the message and I think Wong crossed the line here. If I want to look at "striking" images, I'd rather look through a book of photography or go to a museum rather than sit through a two-hour movie. The only parts of the movie I really enjoyed were the segments with Kaneshiro, which were quite funny and touching. There's a part where he hijacks an ice cream truck and takes a family along for a joyride that is almost sublime and shows how much promise this film had. If Wong could have reigned in his creative energy and focused a bit more, this could have been another of Wong's classic films. As such, hardcore Wong Kar-Wai fans might enjoy this movie, but most others will most likely be bored and/or confused. |
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| Utopian futurists and apocalyptic doomsayers agree that modern urban culture is radically changing the interior lives of the men and women who inhabit it. It's hard to say which camp, if either, Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai (Happy Together) belongs in, but one thing is for sure: No one is better than Wong at evoking the intoxicating, emotionally dissociative power of life in our sprawling First World metropolises. Like most of his films since 1988's As Tears Go By, Fallen Angels focuses on rootless young folks who are torn between their addiction to the city's exhilarating head rush of light, sound, and sexual stimulation and their vestigial desires for the emotional refuge of committed love. In this movie, which was shot three years ago as a companion piece to Chungking Express, an ensemble of twentyish urban pilgrims again do a spasmodic dance of nocturnal roaming, solitary pining, and gratification of their jaded pleasure receptors. It's familiar stuff for those who've seen any of Wong's recent work. So is the visual setting created by director of photography Christopher Doyle -- a fathomless opium reverie of pooling reds and umbers, streaming white motion trails, and haunting music that seems to ride on walls of cold night air. It's easy to lose yourself in this world. And that is Wong's point exactly. None of these characters -- a hit man (Lai) and his sexually frustrated "agent" (Reis, aka Michelle Lee); a mute, slightly addled ex-con (Kaneshiro); a pair of moody, lovelorn sexpots (Mok and Yeung) -- are really happy, but neither are they ready to make the sacrifices of freedom and emotional intensity that might be required to gratify their deeper longings. Because of his hard-to-track narratives and obsession with the sensual aspects of filmmaking, Wong is sometimes characterized along with directors like Michael Rymer (Angel Baby) and David Fincher (Seven) as a maker of feature-length music videos. But whereas videos are all about scattershot, fragmentary impressions, Wong explores his visions with the serene patience of a man searching for images in a shifting cloud bank. Rather than trying to impose meaning on seemingly disjointed images and events, he focuses his gaze so deeply that the meaning emerges unbidden. This unstructured approach poses obvious challenges to actors, but often (as is the case with Fallen Angels) it results in superior work by competent actors like Kaneshiro and outright brilliance by established stars such as Reis and Lai. To a large extent, you're either on the bus with Wong's defiantly unconventional approach or not. However, if you're fed up with the stultifying, formula-driven character of today's mainstream films, give Fallen Angels a try. At the very least you'll be engaged, and if you're lucky you may just recapture some of your original wonder at the seductive power of movies. |
| The first film to come from Wong Kar-wai after the international hype for Chungking Express , Fallen Angels is a companion piece to the former film. Similar to Chungking , the film revolves around two couples who have lost themselves in a frantic city of lights and shadows.
Kinetic and off-kilter, this is a strangely compelling film. Emotionally dislocated and full of visual tricks, you might expect it to be all surface glass and no resonance. But Fallen Angels' night -time, neon-lit stories of a hit man (aka "Killer"), his beautiful employer (aka "Agent") and a selection of loosely bound drifters and ex-cons draw you in through their stories of wretched loneliness and unrequited love. But its not all doom and gloom. The existential romance is undercut with sweet and wistful farce - Killer bumping into an old school friend trying to sell him life insurance or being chatted up by the loopy Punkie in McDonalds; a family force-fed ice cream on an impromptu midnight tour across town and a girl's search for her rival in love, only to find a life-sized blow-up doll - these genuinely funny moments all provide the film with balance, energy and enough humanity to make it likable. Furthermore the final moments add a poignancy which is hard to dismiss lightly. Shot mostly in extreme close-up on a hand-held camera with a wide-angle lens, Fallen Angels stylishly offers brooding film noir painted with a vibrant, expressionist palette. The murder scenes are wonderfully choreographed, more visually beautiful and emotionally void that even Scorcese's. Topped with nervy, ambient noise and set to kitsch Hong Kong pop music, Fallen Angels is a story set in a hyperreal Hong Kong. Wong Kar-Wai succeeds in captures the hectic nature of Hong Kong, balancing it with quiet, almost static moments. The film is a slow, sweet, and often depressing look into the lives of some eccentric, confused characters. Not as successful, nor as original, as the first two, but still fascinating to watch. From a filmmaker who has been described as the colony's premier cinematic iconoclast, this is anarchic filmmaking at its most beautiful and best. |
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