Angel Town (1990) Taurus Entertainment/Action-Drama RT: 106 minutes Rated R (violence, a bloody image, language, brief nudity and sexual content) Director: Eric Karson Screenplay: S.N. Warren Music: Terry Plumeri Cinematography: John LeBlanc Release date: February 23, 1990 (US, limited/April 13, 1990 (US, expansion) Cast: Olivier Gruner, Theresa Saldana, Frank Aragon, Tony Valentino, Peter Kwong, Mike Moroff, Daniel Villarreal, Jim Jaimes, Gregory Cruz, Robin Harlan, Tom McGreevy, Linda Kurimoto, Claudine Penedo, Lupe Amador, Bruce Locke, Jose Duval, Alma Beltran, William Bassett, Mark Dacascos, Lilyan Chauvin. Box Office: $855,810 (US)
Rating: ***
The gang action-drama Angel Town was originally developed as a vehicle for Jean-Claude Van Damme. Somewhere along the way, French martial artist Olivier Gruner got the part instead. Don’t feel too bad for JCVD though; he got a foreign martial artist protects family movie of his very own, Lionheart (1991). He actually got two if you count Nowhere to Run (1993).
Once again, I’m faced with a cheap B-movie that got a limited theatrical release that didn’t include Philadelphia. Reportedly, a gang brawl broke out in a California drive-in theater showing Angel Town. I’m not surprised; it seems that real-life violence typically comes with gang-related movies like The Warriors (1979), Colors (1988) and New Jack City (1991). Nothing like that ever happened in front of me, but I did get searched and patted down when I saw New Jack City. Thank God the guard didn’t find the can of Diet Coke stashed in my book bag.
Angel Town is directed by Eric Karson whose filmography includes the actioners The Octagon (1980) starring Chuck Norris and Black Eagle (1988) with JCVD and Sho Kosugi. It’s written by S.N. Warren whose only other credit is an early draft of Lionheart. She’s not the only connection to the 1991 JCVD vehicle. The two movies have five producers in common- Karson, Anders P. Jensen, Ash R. Shah, Sundip R. Shah and Sunil R. Shah. I’m wondering if any of this was stated on the VHS cover in order to get people to rent it.
I never heard of Olivier Gruner until I happened across Angel Town on Tubi this past weekend. He’s one of the many martial artists who found a side gig as an action star in the late 80s/early 90s. Never mind that he can’t actually act. He’s good at kicking ass. Before he became an actor, he served in the French military. This would end up serving the makers of Lionheart well as Gruner was able to help facilitate access to the photos of Somalia used in the film. Okay, I promise I’ll stop talking about Lionheart. I’ll try to restrict my comments to Angel Town.
Frenchman Jacques Montaigne (Gruner) comes to East L.A. to attend grad school. He arrives a few days later than scheduled after being unavoidably detained by a hot girlfriend who wanted one last screw before he left. Talk about kinky, they do it in a cemetery on his father’s grave. There’s no housing by the time Jacques gets here so he’s forced to find lodging in a bad part of town, a tough neighborhood run by a violent street gang led by Uzi-toting Angel (Valentino, Ghetto Blaster).
Jacques takes a room at a house owned by widowed mother Maria (Saldana, The Evil That Men Do) who resides there with her son Martin (Aragon) and mother (Amador). She’s reluctant to rent to him at first due to safety concerns. Angel and his gang have been harassing them for a while. They’re pissed off because Martin refuses to join their organization. The son of an anti-gang activist murdered by gangbangers, he has no interest in the lifestyle they have to offer. Jacques quickly proves he can handle himself when he beats down gang members attacking students at the school. This makes him a target for Angel who orders his guys to deal with him. Easier said than done, vato!
When the dirtbags turn up the heat on Martin, Jacques relocates him to the karate school run by his best friend Henry (Kwong, The Golden Child). As it so happens, Henry knew Martin’s late father back in the day. They both fought to put an end to all gang activity in the neighborhood. The latest attack by the gang results in the grandmother’s death by heart attack. Now Jacques is really mad. He decides to turn up the heat on Angel and his gang, but not before another attempt is made on his life. Angel makes the mistake of literally sending a boy to do a man’s job. He sends a little kid to do a drive-by only for the boy to miss the intended target and hit an innocent bystander instead.
Jacques retaliates by breaking into Angel’s house and threatening him at knifepoint while he’s lying in bed next to his driver/girlfriend (Penedo). For laughing at him, he kills her and places her body in Jacques’ room at Maria’s house. Not one to back down, Jacques puts her body in his car trunk while he’s boning some other girl. No one’s had this much fun with a corpse since Weekend at Bernie’s.
Thankfully, Jacques doesn’t have to fight this war solo. A neighbor named Frank (Moroff, RoboCop), a Vietnam vet paralyzed from the waist down, is on his side. He initially supports Jacques from the sideline, lamenting his useless lower limbs at one point. He comes through when it counts though; grabbing a machine gun and making his way to Maria’s front porch to sit by Martin’s side as he tries to protect his home from invading gang punks. The climactic fight is totally bad ass. Jacques, with some help from Henry and a few of his students, beats the crap out of the creeps before turning his attention to Angel. It’s a cool fight that goes in a somewhat unexpected direction.
I’ll grant that Angel Town isn’t especially well made. It runs a little longer than it needs to. The acting isn’t particularly good. Gruner, for all his superior martial arts skills, is fairly wooden. So are a lot of the late 80s/early 90s action stars who specialized in movies that either made a quick trip to video stores after a brief limited theatrical run or bypassed cinemas altogether. Therefore, Gruner is no worse than somebody like Don “The Dragon” Wilson (of the Bloodfist movies). He actually reminds me a lot of JCVD with the French accent and high-kicking fighting style. BTW, this is the first time I’ve seen him in anything. I’m going to look for some of his other titles.
The late Saldana, who also played the wife of Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (1980), does a decent job as Maria. She plays the role with grace and dignity. Moroff makes a real impression as the vet who’s had enough of sitting on his porch while war wages around him. Aragon is okay as Martin, the good son with a lot of pent-up anger. Valentino is just okay too. Angel is your standard-issue Latino gang leader who glowers and calls everybody “vato” while waving an Uzi around.
Angel isn’t the only antagonist in Angel Town. Jacques also runs into problems with the university chairman (McGreevey) who comes right out and tells the exchange student how much he dislikes him. Jacques shows him up, however, when he solves a difficult math problem during a lecture. This is the only time we ever see Jacques attend a class. He spends most of his time kicking the asses of gang members who just don’t get the message about leaving his adoptive American family alone. There’s also some business about him training a team of fighters for the Olympics, but we never see him do that either. On the upside, Warren tries to give Jacques depth with flashbacks to his tragic past. He grew up poor, was bullied by peers and teachers and saw his father get murdered by hoodlums. This is why he sympathizes with Martin and his family.
It may not be arthouse cinema, but Angel Town is quite good for a low-budget B-movie. It has lots of action, but it also has a heart. It’s not always an easy mix of action and drama, but enough of the film works to make it watchable.
