Angel Town (1991)

This is DTVC Hall of Famer Olivier Gruner's first film. I've been looking for it for a while now, and I know Kenner at Movies in the Attic has wanted me to get it up. Well, we made it, we finally made it.

Angel Town has Gruner as a French dude who comes to LA to get his masters in engineering, and train the US Olympic martial arts team. Problem is, he gets here late, and the only housing he can find is in a gang controlled barrio. Too bad for him, huh? No, too bad for them, because he's pissed that the nice mother, grandmother, and son that gave him a place to stay have to live in fear of these punks, and he's going to do something about it.



This was pretty stellar. A little long (105 minutes, when it really had about 80 minutes worth of material), but Gruner was solid, especially in his fighting skills-- his English and acting, maybe notsomuch. The plot did a good job of depicting the plight of the neighborhood in terms of residents that have given up fighting the gangs, and just accepted their terror as a way of life, and as Gruner giving them that sense of fight back. Sure, he's the hero, but he can't be the hero without the people being heroic and standing up with him. Instead of making it look like a bunch of savages that can't take care of themselves and need a white man to step in and sort them out, it was more like people who are victimized by a system that has neglected them and allowed the gangs to reign uncontested, and Gruner is the agency through which they reclaim their lives.

And boy, is Gruner that agency. Total badass. Again, the feeling is that it's not he who we should pity for moving into a bad neighborhood, but the people who terrorize that neighborhood who should be afraid that they're picking a fight with him. It's like a Steven Seagal level of badass, only much cooler. Last August he celebrated his 50th birthday. I feel like such a dork that I missed that. Well, for what it's worth, happy belated birthday.



I don't want to give away too much of the film, but there were a few elements that this handled really well that most movies screw up. First, Gruner's friend puts his life in danger to help out against the gangs. Usually, that friend would be killed off by the gang, leaving Gruner with a revenge motive. That always pisses me off, because it makes the hero less heroic in my eyes. He needs to rely on people who end up dying for him. What Angel Town does is it has the friend be a defeatist who thinks Gruner is wasting his time fighting the gangs. When the gang attacks his dojo, no one is killed, but he realizes that he shouldn't live in fear of them, that he needs to fight back too. Excellent use of the friend character. The other one was the end battle. They don't insult our intelligence by having us believe that a Gruner who could take out five gang members at once would have trouble dealing with their leader, just because he's their leader. What they do is have Gruner soften the leader up, so the son of the woman he was staying with can fight the guy and get some satisfaction. Again, great way to rework the classic ending paradigm. There are ways to make bad action movies better, but they don't involve techno music, bad jump cuts and camera angles, or atrociously dragged on plots. Just look at Angel Town.

There was one moment where the racial issue-- I'm not saying was handled poorly, but rather, maybe needed more of an explanation if they were going to go there, even though that explanation would have gummed up the film, meaning maybe they probably shouldn't have gone there. Gruner is called a "frog" by a classmate, who is an Arab. Gruner grabs him by the collar and calls him a "rag head". Now, the thing is, Gruner's character, growing up a street urchin in Paris, would have been in direct conflict with impoverished Algerians, and it's not inconceivable that that animosity would have been divided on racial lines. The problem is, either way, it paints our hero as a racist-- I mean, I'm of French descent, and I know from experience that being called a "frog" should not be equated to any bigoted term meant to dehumanize a race, gender, creed, or sexuality. It was just a bad look in a semi-applause scene that shouldn't have been, even if it was meant to fill out Gruner's character's back-story. Come on Angel Town, you're better than that.



Mark Dacascos is in this for like two short scenes, just long enough to get his ass kicked by Gruner. There aren't really any close-ups on him, but I suspected it was him from his voice: Hawaiian American English is not East LA Chicano American English. Anyway, in the credits, he's listed as "Mark Dacuscos". As far as what he's been up to, his last four films after I Am Omega have not been released on DVD yet, but according to imdb, they could be some good ones. It's always a tough decision when it comes to whether or not to tag with a short bit part like that, because, on the one hand, we want people to know an actor is in the film, while on the other, I don't want people thinking the actor is in it a bunch. Our most recent example of this was with Michael Dudikoff in the 1981 cult horror classic Bloody Birthday, where he was in it for two funeral scenes and one make-out session with Julie Brown (the red head, not the Downtown one). But you want to know there's a horror movie out there with Dudikoff in it, right? (It's actually pretty good beyond him too.) Then you have Gary Daniels in Submerged, Deadly Bet, and perhaps most disappointingly, Retrograde. I think with those three films, it's more of a warning, because you see him listed and think "wow, Daniels with Seagal, or Daniels with Jeff Wincott, or Daniels with Dolph Lundgren, where do I sign up?" I think that's the big thing with Angel Town, because Dacascos is on the first page of imdb's cast listing, which can be very misleading. He's essentially a glorified extra with lines and a misspelled name in the credits.

As per usual, I'm getting off on a rant on that seventh paragraph, so let's wrap it up. Angel Town is not only a great first film for Olivier Gruner, it's a great DTV actioner as well. Solid fights, explosions, etc., plus a decent plot that doesn't have all the "ugh!" elements that most bad action films resort to. A bit of a hidden gem. Unfortunately, not available on Netflix, but it is on DVD if you want it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099039/