Within the first 10 minutes of this overlooked film, Mickey Rourke, a beatnick trumpeteer out of hope, has been driven to the desert by one of Bill Murray's ganngsters, has his life saved by some obscure Indian ninjas!, and finds a circus in the middle of the desert, where, among other curiosities, he meets Megan Fox with wings, a real angel.
One would expect that afterwards everything would continue to be as strange and manic as this, but instead, we get an odd love story that plays like a Tom Waits song, with Rourke and Fox on the run from everybody and Bill Murray playing the quiet menacing villain. Every screen image is soaked in loving melancholia, and as the film slowly processes to its climax you believe that Fox is an angel...
Then the final scene comes along, and everything is set in its place, bringing further blues on Rourke's face, and the viewer's face...
Rourke is at his best, somewhere between Barfly and the Wrestler, there's noone better at playing this out-of-luck-could-have-been-a-contender thing. Murray underacts as usually in recent years, but it makes his villain even more threatening. Fox is a real surprise in that she manages to hold against Rourke (playing an actual role for the first time in her career); Beside them, Kelly Lynch offers brief wisdom, and Rhys Ifans offers the remaining manic moments of the film.
A small offbeat, oddball poem, not to everyone's taste, but it will be an adorable memory for some
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