review: Having spent the six years previous writing and producing, Luc Besson returns to the directors chair with Angel-A. I'm a huge fan of Léon, and quite liked the prospect of a black and white French film from the same chap.<br /><br />André is a liar and gambling addict, owing money to almost every loan shark in Paris. Unable to repay his debts, and fed up with being held over the edge of the Eiffel Tower, he decides to kill himself. He happens to do so at the same time as a mysterious woman, who he decides to save. Determined to thank him, she begins to help him fix his own life.<br /><br />The film starts with some laughs, which run well throughout. The visuals are quite nice and work well with the sights of Paris. But that is it. That's all the film has got going for it. And these mere two facets can do nothing to hold back the torrent of terrible film-making the movie unleashes. Though I can't hugely fault the main character (his inconsistencies are close though), the eponymous one is ghastly. A terrible screen presence and bitterly annoying. The plot is ridiculously inconsistent itself, and at times bizarrely silly, particularly the ending; an ending which completely bloodied the fledgling redemption engendered by the scenes immediately prior to it. Perhaps the most ridiculous scene I've had the ignominy of observing, it is stupid, indulgent, melodramatic, and considerably too awful to be "so bad it's funny". The overall premise of the film could conceivably have once held potential, but it is brutally massacred by the unendingly terrible implementation of its ideas. The film really was a task to watch, and one which had me screaming at the screen the whole way through.<br /><br />Massively and immeasurably flawed, Angel-A is just plain bad. Though its occasionally fun dialogue manages to draw out chortles at rare intervals, by the end it is clear that this film is nothing more than repugnant.