| By Rad Hallman
Old Gold and Black Reviewer
City of Angels is a philosophical romance with an interesting twist that does not quite succeed with its intentions because of its reliance on sappy moments.
Nicholas Cage delivers an adequate performance as Seth, the unhappy angel, and Meg Ryan drives the movie with a stronger performance in the role of Maggie, the doctor that Seth falls for.
The film is set in a miraculously smog-free Los Angeles where the traffic and lazy highway workers seem to be the biggest concern for most of the locals.
Lurking everywhere someone may be suffering or on the verge of death are puppy-eyed angels whose mission it is to save some people and escort others to the great beyond.
Seth is one of these angels and the action begins as he escorts a young child out of her earthly life as she dies in the hospital. Later, Seth is assigned to Mr. Messinger (Dennis Franz) who is in the care of Maggie and suffering from a heart condition. Seth forgets about overweight man in bed and immediately becomes smitten enough with Maggie to make himself visible to her.
When Seth becomes visible to Maggie, he immediately complicates matters as he puts on the old Nick Cage charm and has Maggie questioning his origins. After getting advice from the once-angel Messinger on what it takes to become human, Seth decides that his love for Maggie is worth the jump into terrestrial living.
The majority of the film deals with Seth's wonder at the array of human senses and his amazement at such banal things as pears and showers.
The plotline of City of Angels makes it seem like a sappy, high-concept love story, which in many ways it is. However, this film seems to hold many, of the philosophical elements of the Wim Wenders film, Wings of Desire, on which it is based.
Existence and sensuality are examined in ways that most Hollywood features would rather ignore. Cage's performance may seem overly dramatic, but he adequately expresses the extreme desire to experience the details that make up reality.
Ryan's character moves from a success-driven skeptic to a person who realizes that the true miracle of life arises from simply existing in reality and not forgetting the beauty of the most simple of occurrences.
City of Angels is not the usual studio-fare. It comes close to being a truly splendid portrait of the human experience, but ends up mired in sappy lines and puppy-dog faces.
Those involved with this picture should be commended for attempting to bring up subjects that major pictures such as Titanic would just as soon leave behind.
City of Angels suggests a manner of living in which nothing is taken for granted, including the darker elements of life. Life and death are included as different sides of the same process of existence in this film.
Instead of portraying death as the unavoidable and intrinsically evil terminus of life, it becomes an adequate conclusion to a life filled with sensory and emotional stimulation.
If only this movie did not have to cater to the expectations of cheesy romantic comedies, it may have truly succeeded in portraying the essence of life, which should be the purpose of all good representative art. |