Angel-A (Dir. Luc Besson)--Movie Review

Andre (Jamel Debbouze), a green-card American descended from Algerians living in Paris owes a lot of people a lot of money, and sees only one solution to his woes. Enter Angela (Rie Rassmussen), who shows up on the same bridge over the Seine, seemingly with the same intention. Andre ends up saving her life instead of taking his own, and soon discovers that Angela will do anything it takes to get Andre back on his feet.

Angela has legs up to here that she flaunts under a micromini with saucily matching panties, fighting tactics that can easily trounce even the toughest Serbian baddie, and the ability to make money the way down-on-his-luck Andre creates nervous sweat. She came down from the sky, and now she's begging Andre to come to bed. In other words, Andre's angel is a centerfold.

Director Luc Besson returns to filmmaking after the back-to-back debacles that were The Fifth Element and The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc. He's gone back to basics, with a stripped-down filmmaking style that recalls the grittiness of Leon (The Professional) and La Femme Nikita. His new muse, a Danish-American actress best known for being completely overshadowed by Rebecca Romijn in Brian DePalma's largely forgettable Femme Fatale, may as well have sprung from Besson's forehead. Rassmussen, who Besson shoots to look about nine feet tall, can't possibly be a real person as much as she's a highly evolved Anne Parillaud-Milla Jovovich hybrid.

Besson wants so much for Angel-A to be a love story, but he can't get around the fact that Angela, in both appearance and conception, is the ideal cipher of the perfect woman. As appealing as Debbouze is as fast-talking sad sack Andre, his pleas for Angela to stay on earth don't feel like true love. What man wouldn't want a woman like Angela? She has no past, and her purpose on earth is to make Andre feel good about himself. Besson plays with this tension throughout, culminating in a breathtakingly beautiful image of an otherworldy struggle in the sky, but he's got to have his angel and knock her off the pedestal, too.