peteg's blog - noise - movies - 2024 04 22 FallenAngels

Fallen Angels (1995)

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Some very late Wong Kar-Wai completism prompted by the Christopher Doyle biopic. This has some of their classic cinematography made famous by Chungking Express but is disjointed and opts for the thematic, making it seem like offcuts from something more coherent. Over two widely-spaced nights due to a failure to grip.

The more developed thread has Leon Lai as an assassin whose agent Michelle Reis is in love with him. Somehow he's more interested in Karen Mok's Blondie. Mostly separately elfin Takeshi Kaneshiro breaks into various food vendor premises including an ice cream truck to zany effect. He's mute (but narrates for us) so potential squeeze Charlie Yeung has to do all the talking. There's the odd semi-decent grounding scene with his father Man-Lei Chan in Chungking Mansions.

Roger Ebert found three stars. Pure cinema? Stephen Holden: weightless. Excess details at Wikipedia. I prefer Wong Kar-Wai's lover movies to these fighter ones.