Mickey Rourke has taken some grief in the past for his performances in roles that just seemed wrong for him, but I think he's terrific when he gets the right part, and he sure got it here. In 1955, Harry Angel, a lower-class stumblebum detective from Brooklyn, who is no NASA candidate, is hired by a stranger to find a singer missing since the war. The singer is believed to have breached a contract with the mysterious stranger. Along the way to this ostensibly simple assignment, Rourke finds a trail of grisly murders, confusing clues, beatings, black magic, and plenty of atmosphere in New Orleans, Harlem, and Coney Island. As time goes on, both he and we discover that he is searching for something else besides a singer - something sinister and somehow related to the detective himself.

It's a combination horror movie and detective film noir, and it's terrific, although the plot is incredibly complicated and confusing. As the genre requires, Angel gets beat up about every ten minutes, and neither he nor we are exactly sure why in some cases. What we do know is that Mr. Johnny Favorite, the missing singer, was one serious sleazebag who engaged in some blasphemously evil practices.

At one time I tried to figure out some of these unexplained details, so I read the prize-winning book upon which the film is based, then lent it to a friend to read. The name of the book is Falling Angel, and it was written in 1978, nearly a decade before the movie was released. It is available as an inexpensive paperback. Between the two of us, we had no more clue after reading and discussing the book than before we started it. I think you have to just accept that it is some dark evil stuff, and forget about trying to tie it down too tight. I can't say much more because the mystery is much more fun if you try to solve it along with Harry Angel.

Director Alan Parker really did an exceptional job on the atmospheric touches that keep the mystery mysterious and the horror horrible. The rusty mechanisms in Angel's recurring half-memories, the decaying hospital, the seedy offices and apartments, the shanties of Algiers, Louisiana, the various haunts and artifacts of black magic, the heart-beat background score - all combine to give us a creepy, spooky, feeling of incomprehension, matching what is going through the head of the simple detective.

In addition to the atmospheric direction, there is some interesting casting to support Rourke. Former Cosby kid Lisa Bonet took the most un-Cosby role she could find, showing her breasts constantly as Rourke's lover ... and daughter. Their sex scene was hot enough that it had to be trimmed for the R rating. Bonet showed more than flesh. She also demonstrated some talent. She was quite natural and sexy as hell, but her career fizzled into nothingness. (Rumor is that she was not an easy person to work with, to state it mildly.) Robert DeNiro holds down the other lead, as the mysterious client, speaking with a refinement not usually found in his range, and all the while doing a very odd impersonation of his good friend Marty Scorsese.

If I gave star ratings, this would be a near-miss for four stars, finishing at 3.5 (the same rating Roger Ebert gave it). I like the movie enough to give it four and recommend it heartily, but I have to remind myself that it is a genre film without universal appeal, and it has some flaws related to confusion, detail-orientation, and continuity. But I love it nonetheless.