Product Details

• Actors: Kaho Minami
• Directors: Sogo Ishii
• Format: NTSC
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: New Yorker Films
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 5554820301

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Something lost in the translation, August 21, 2000

By 

Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Angel Dust [VHS] (VHS Tape)

There's some interesting use of sound in "Angel Dust" and some splendid cinematography by Norimicho Kasamatu, especially of interiors and the memorable scene with many umbrellas. Kaho Minami, who plays the female lead, Setsuk Suma, a Tokyo "police psychologist," is beautiful, and her co-star Takeshi Wakamatsu, as psychologist Rei Aku, has an appealing rakishness about him. Unfortunately the plodding direction by Sogo Ishi lacks tension and rambles more than a bit. Add to that a convoluted mishmash of pop psychology, stilted dialogue, posed theatrics, and we have one long disappointment.

The dialogue is probably not as bad as it appears in the English subtitles, which were very poorly edited with bad verb numbers, wrong tenses and some strange word translations, e.g., "re-brain-washing" for reprogramming. Or, "You're a pleasure homicidal mania" the killer is told, meaning the killer enjoys his work, I imagine. Annoying, unconvincing and too long were the "re-brain-washing" sequences presented in grainy, flickering black and white (we were supposed to be seeing them as on video tape). The idea of a religious cult member committing murders on the Tokyo subway is as real as newspaper headlines, of course, but the psychology behind the killings here didn't wash. The "religion" was so generic as to be anonymous. We felt nothing for the victims because they were not made real, nor were any of the characters except the leads really animated.

More than anything though this movie suffered from the miscasting of Kaho Minami as the police shrink. She was somewhat believable in her "disintegrating" phase (although the scene at Aku's sanatorium with him on the TV screen was unintentionally silly), but entirely too wimpy and dreamy to be convincing as any kind of cop. The scenes with her and Aku were interesting as far as they went; unfortunately, the sharp chemical contrast between his macho nature and her alluring femininity was not ignited. One had the sense they were saving that for after the film was over. Too bad. The androgynous nature of her husband and the killer seemed pointless, but again possibly something was lost in the translation.

I think what happened here is Sogo Ishi got caught between a theatrical tradition and some notions of Western style realism, and ended up with succotash.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A mind bending experience, December 7, 2002

By 

Miguel B. Llora (Bay Point, California USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Angel Dust [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Sogo Ishii is certainly a genius - but that is an old and tired story. Angel Dust is a mind trip - pun intended. The story is labyrinthine in the sense that it gives nothing away until the last minute. A killer is murdering young women in a Tokyo subway. Setsuko is assigned to the case because of her past experience with issues of this nature. Trying to get into the mind of the killer, the lines between the personal and the professional begin to blur. The road leads to her "ex" Aku - which complicates the story even further. Foreign films, are to say the least, already somewhat inaccessible because of the language and cultural framework within which the story takes place. My sense is that despite this probably being unintended, Sogo Ishii uses that sense of isolation to his advantage. Granted that this film was perhaps designed for a Japanese audience it is nonetheless compelling for non-Japanese. Angel Dust is a multi-layered film with many twists and turns. The more cerebral and less blood and guts approach I have to admit I really appreciated. I found myself almost drawn in to the movie like I was to Andrei Tarkovsky's original version of Solaris (also available on Amazon.com). A little bit of Sake helps take the edge off - it is intense, it is fun and it is thought provoking.

Miguel Llora

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Truely great, June 21, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Boston, Mass.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Angel Dust [VHS] (VHS Tape)

The first time I saw Angel Dust, it left me a nervous wreck, paranoid, afraid to move off the edge of my seat. I marked it up as one of the absolute best technical uses of suspense I'd ever seen, and looked forward to viewing it again. I've seen it several more times since then; and each time, my respect and admiration for the sheer genius of the film have grown. Indeed, I find new details each time, moments and expressions that change the meaning of large sections. Angel Dust is one of the few films I've ever seen that can get non-film majors talking about framing and shot choice, and do this without letting go of its hold on their attention and emotions.