Angel of Death

Ok the actings are not so great but it is a good action flick.

A small-budget exercise in what can be accomplished in on-line video, "Angel of Death" is startlingly effective as a full-length product.

Starring near-legendary stunt performer Zoe Bell ("Kill Bill," "Death Proof" and others), this action adventure never pulls its punches. Every shot hits - and some very bloody hits they are. It creates some of the same energy and electricity as "Wanted," with mordant humor and wonderful guest performances from brilliant mime Doug Jones (who created Abe Sapien in "Hellboy," the Silver Surfer and others) and the woman for whom Bell doubled for years, Lucy "Zena" Lawless.

Terrific editing suits Ed Brubaker's potboiler plot, with camera angles and scene framing joyfully celebrating the story's hard core comic book feel. Darrel Herbert's music is derivative but effectively enhances the over-the-top approach of the action.

To paraphrase Ordell Robbie, "When you absolutely, positively want to watch a warrior woman take out every m*-f* in the room," check out Zoe Bell as Eve. "Angel of Death" delivers the goods.

Despite the comic-book style editing and the way the film skips from one scene to the next with the aid of animated borders, ANGEL OF DEATH is really nothing more than yet another story about a female assassin out for revenge. It goes for a gritty, SIN CITY style moody look, but to be honest this has all been done so many times before that it feels rather passe.

ANGEL OF DEATH features stunt-woman turned actress Zoe Bell (DEATH PROOF) as a professional assassin who's out for revenge against the people who betrayed her. Along the way, she suffers the effects of a traumatic wound, as well as fighting her own conscience. The plot is light and the script lighter, as this is merely an excuse to string together a series of hard-hitting fight sequences.

The good news is that the fights are well staged, thankfully avoiding the dodgy shaky-cam work often used these days; they're also pleasingly violent. However, that's pretty much the only decent thing about ANGEL OF DEATH. The script is sub-par, the direction tries too hard to be atmospheric, and Bell just doesn't cut it as a leading actress. The producers win points for casting some B-movie favourites such as Lucy Lawless (SPARTACUS), Doug Jones (PAN'S LABYRINTH) and Ted Raimi (DARKMAN), but it's not enough to make this a good movie.

You know from the beginning this is not Quentin Tarantino nor is it trying to be , it's just a fun popcorn movie, but the main thing that ruins the movie is choosing a stunt woman as a lead actor. She just doesn't have the chops to pull this off. Even the third stringers out-act her here. She's not horrible, but she definitely can't pull off an ensemble part , and doesn't have one redeemable character trait she can use to make her character even slightly real. The movie is over the top violent and ridiculous, with a fun twist, but any other real actress would have solidified the movie. It has all the cliché elements you need for this type of flick, and good production values, but when the extra on the phone in the elevator delivers her lines better than the lead, there's a problem.

Ed Brubaker is a name to know in comics, but it should also be known in movies. Hopefully this will be a good calling card for him to get more work, or for more of his comics to reach the screen. While he's usually known for his spin on Captain America, he also has a series of hard-hitting hard-boiled comics called 'Criminal' (at the moment, I think, there's three volumes in all). Angel of Death follows along on the heels of those latter comics, and what he delivers here with this script is like an updating of a pulpy story that might have been found back in the 1950s put to film - only, of course, far less violent and expletive or on occasion trippy. It's like a Sin City yarn if it took itself not quite as much as a parody. And it works, mostly.

And another good thing about it, with its story about a hit-woman (Zoe Bell) who after getting a knife stabbed in her head and surviving- and becoming a loose cannon and seeing visions of a young girl she accidentally killed "telling her" to hit the entire mob organization around her- is that it leads on tough-movie dialog, kick-ass fight scenes and a really superb leading lady. Previously one could see Bell as a stunt-woman in Kill Bill or as herself, sorta, in Death Proof. But here she proves she can hold her own in dramatic scenes (maybe not quite her Uma Thurman counterpart but close enough) and seeing her fight is really extraordinary.

In fact, if you're just looking for a better-than-average direct-to-DVD action flick that chalks up a load of mob-movie/detective clichés, and don't know or care about Brubaker's name on the DVD, it's still worth watching. The fights are gritty and realistic, and the direction compliments these moments of torrid psycho-drama with Bell's knack for knocking someone's head in or any other kind of clever way of killing at a moment's notice. The film sometimes goes into a comic-book-panel kind of mis-en-scene, like if Zoe Bell's character is in a room walking around we'll see three different 'panels' of this. It's creative, if a little overused (and not so original if one's seen Ang Lee's Hulk). And, as a more obvious complaint, with the exception of Doug Jones and Lucy Lawless most of the cast is just 'meh', not terrible but nothing special.

But pick it up if you're roving around your video rental or if netflix gives the recommendation. You'll be surprised how much 78 minutes can go in delivering a hard-knock story of hard kills and harder consequences.