Black Angel is a 90's Japanese action thriller about a girl who gets revenge on the Yakuza. That's the gist of it but the movie is also really stylishly filmed and has a lot of emotional depth too.
This is a film about 3 women who are all inextricably linked together. Taken from her mother at birth the first woman named "Ikko Amaoka" (Riona Hazuki) watches as her grandfather and bodyguards are all shot in front of her when she is only 6 years old.
A nice memory of my teenage life when I saw this film on TV with my friendsBlack Angel is very dark thrillingBut also exiting feeling, one didn't know what will happen for poor Ikko and her quest to find her identity or who killed her family.But there are some awkward scenes and some scenes are too violent but however there are some nice moment too, like when Ikko dance with her friend.
One of my favorite movies from the 90s based on a manga with the same name, the black angel is mix of noir action adventure and misfortune.As a 6 year old girl, Ikko lives a good life with her yakuza family.
A schmaltzy, violent, slow moving action flick following a young girl who witnesses her family's massacre and returns 14 years later to seek vengeance. The soap opera's hamminess and relationships lend it some interest, as do a couple of camera shots.
Takashi Ishii's Kuro No Tenshi is a good action film but borrows too many themes and ideas from better movies such as La Femme Nikita, Leon:The Professional and Naked Killer. Reona Hazuki is perfectly cast as Ikko, the child turned cold-blooded assassin who is out to revenge the murder of her Yakuza father.
I saw this movie at the 1998 Seattle Film Festival (like another IMDB user, apparently) and fell in love with it. I had already been charmed by Riona Hazuki in Parasite Eve, and was delighted to see her in this role.
This is part one of Takashi Ishii's "Black Angel" double feature. The two films aren't connected by characters, just a similar general plot focused on female killers.
I don't know why so many people love flashy but empty Hong Kong action movies when there are much darker, more violent and interesting crime and horror movies over in Japan! Quentin Tarantino's brilliant 'Kill Bill' is inspired by much of this stuff, specifically Kinji Fukasaku's amazing 'Battle Royale' and Takashi Miike's mind-blowing 'Ichi The Killer', so I'm hoping that it signals the beginning of a lot more attention from Western audiences on the seemingly endless invention of the more extreme end of the Japanese film industry.
