Tacticalin An absolute waste of money

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Thomas Tokmenko This movie is absolutely straight-up bonkers, nuts, crazy, insane. To say "the cinematographer's fueled by a combination of drugs" is an understatement. Seeing a few of Wong Kar-Wai's other features I really had high hopes for this one, however at the end I found it disappointing as it doesn't capture the same charisma or structure of his other films, for example like As Tears Go By or Chungking Express. The biggest problem in my opinion is Michelle Reis' character as the set-up girl. She isn't given enough screen time to establish a decent bond with the audience, the charm surrounding her is flat. Karen Mok's character of Blondie is unfortunately average, she comes across as annoying rather than afflicted and thus fails to capture the audience's interest too. The women in this movie just don't tote the same amount of power as in other Kar-Wai films. The females are cold and don't intend to change, which goes against the male characters and flow of the movie. Again the cinematography feels overzealous and at some moments, even pretentious which I never thought I could say about Kar-Wai. Complaints aside, Takeshi Kaneshiro steals the show with his bizarre character, and I would actually watch the movie again just to see his portion. There's a lot of great themes here, and the sense of grittiness and isolation is done extremely well. Overall I didn't enjoy Fallen Angels, but I do understand the attraction. Other Wong Kar-Wai fans may love it. -6/10

timmy_501 Although I had seen several of his films before, it wasn't until I saw Chungking Express a few months ago that I encountered a Wong Kar Wai film I found above average. Fallen Angels is loosely connected to that work and it uses a similar structure but it always feels original and unique.The most impressive part of Fallen Angels is the cinematography. Wong, working again with the great Christopher Doyle, breathes life into the garish urban nightscape of modern Hong Kong. Exhilarating shots such as the high speed motorcycle trip through a tunnel lit by green neon are so great on their own that they almost overshadow the visual mastery of the more stationary shots.The characters are less successful in their attempts to make connections here than in Wong's previous film; coupled with the violence, this makes for a darker, less optimistic viewing experience. The most effective scenes here deal with loss as when He Zhiwu, one of the film's two male protagonists, makes a spectacle of himself in front of his ex-girlfriend who completely ignores his antics.With Chunking Express and Fallen Angels, Wong established himself not only as one of the most eminent film-makers of the 1990s but also as the single greatest visual chronicler of modern urban malaise. Not since the heyday of Michelangelo Antonioni has a film director examined alienation with such skill.

chaos-rampant Some movies are tableaux observed from a fixed distance, a remnant of old theatrical ways they don't whisper so we will get up close and listen they shout out at us in our seat, their motions stopping at the edge of that figurative stage created by the camera. A Wong Kar Wai movie throws itself at you, or it stays the distance and invites you to climb the stage and take intimate looks, and none does it better from what I've seen so far than Fallen Angels. This is a movie that sends us hurling at top speed through the electric night of Hong Kong, blurred neon colors bleeding by the camera in splashes of light and shape, then it holes itself up in cheap fleabag rooms or dingy bathrooms to stare itself at the mirror or lie in bed exhausted and inert. This is stylish and cool but Wong Kar Wai is so terrific he goes the extra mile, he makes his stylish awfully poignant. And I like how he can make his films funny without breaking up the tone, without the movie making it seem like it's stopping in its tracks to relieve tension, it's all part of the journey.As with previous films, Fallen Angels tells us a vibrant expressionist story of lonely souls aching for connection, now when the normal folks go to bed the movie's characters crawl out of their holes to call out in the dead of night to anyone who might listen, even those who won't, each character only a moment's stop in another's journey through life. It is frantic, in a constant flux and motion and search for something, as though driven by instinctive Bedouin locomotion. The movie is motioning towards a sense of destination, a warm place those characters can call home and finally rest in, but it starts and finishes before that destination can be reached, hanging in the existential middle like the blurry snapshot of something that moves. The snapshot here is not simply the memento of something come and gone, it's something to be celebrated for its own momentary fleeting beauty. They might go on to reach home or not, but a girl is riding on a motorbike with a man she doesn't know, she knows the road is not that long and that she'll be getting off soon but at that moment she feels good. Then the movie comes out of a tunnel into the break of dawn, and it would be years (maybe not until Mann's Collateral) before we'd get another movie that takes us on a ride like this through the electric night.

RainDogJr Is a shame that here in Mexico city the cinemas are full of American films, i love a lot of American films but i prefer a film like Fallen Angels or Chungking express than films like The day after tomorrow or Rocky Balboa. Here is very difficult to find a film of Hong Kong in the cinemas and also is a little difficult to find it on a DVD store.But i have the luck to buy Fallen Angels and i consider myself a very lucky person because i have the chance to watch a film like this.Fallen Angels is perfect.........for my is the best of Wong Kar Wai (i haven't see all his films but by now i think that this is the best).Fallen Angels is the story of a couple: a hit-man and his girlfriend, the other character is a mute and a girl that he meets in a store and finally there's another character that is a young lady that spend some time with the hit-man.This film is about love and also about relationships.There are two stories: the one of the hit-man, that show to us that he only see his girlfriend for work and also show to us the lonely life of the two....the hit-man meets this young lady and spend some time with her but nothing serious.Finally the hit-man gets killed.The other is about the best character of the film and maybe the best character in a Wong Kar Wai film : a young mute that in the night have a lot of different jobs like sells ice cream or a work as a barber but the problem is that this aren't his business so he enter like a criminal to this places. Later he meets a girl that always is fighting with her boyfriend and the mute fells in love. He has very good times with the girl, goes to a soccer match and also his hair has become blonde because of the love. Finally the girl never come to the other soccer match because she never love him.Also show to us his relationship with his dad, and how he spend most of the time recording to is dad.......Great character and awesome played by Takeshi Kaneshiro (Chungking Express).Finally his dad die and he spend a lot of time watching the tape of his dad........finally he meets the hit-man's girlfriend and he starts to hanging around with her.Well this is a great story but i love a lot all the characters and for me that is the best part of the film.If you want to see one of the greatest love stories and one of the best films ever you must see Fallen Angels...another masterpiece of Wong Kar Wai.Also the best scene in the film is when the mute is watching the tape and remembering his father and also when he meets a boy in the barbershop and later he meets the same boy with his family in the ice cream truck.FALLEN ANGELS 10/10