| Arno Ching-wan | 1.25 | |
| Ordell Robbie | 1 | Far from heaven |
With Black Angel, the limits -Gonin excepted- of Ishii Takashi as a director are evident. His description of avenger women in a Japanese sexist society, his taste for a certain blackness make a heir of the Japanese seventies exploitation of him. But the stylistic treatment and the casting maintain his work at the bottom, i.e. on the level of the average exploitation movie. In Gonin , the alternation between chpopped gunfights and the heavy, slow atmosphere of non-action scenes was well managed by the editing. Here, all that leads too an editing that is either too slow or too fast. And these "mangaesques" frames are bringing a useless overstylization whereas the abuse of useless wide angles are bringing us back to the worst of Eighties cinema. For the remainder, there is Woo of the poor slow motins at the time of an assassination and fake audacity (the scene of torture filmed subejctively). And a use of the score is either stereotyped (the opera on a scene of murder) or failing to be ironic (flamenco). The second part actors overplay or try to act cool without having the charisma for it. And the actresses do not have the minimum of charisma expected from an actress of exploitation cinema. The muddled scenario acheives to make of Black Angel a revenge movie not having the means of its small ambitions. It makes us want to reevaluate some HK Girls with Guns which are also unbrilliant but less overlong too watch...
