Fallen Angels ★★★☆☆
Wong Kar-wai’s Fallen Angels is like watching a late-night fever dream—if that dream were fueled by neon lights, existential loneliness, and maybe one too many cups of espresso. Set in a hypnotic, rain-drenched Hong Kong, this moody neo-noir throws together a collection of disillusioned urbanites whose lives intersect in strange, serendipitous ways, all while they brood beautifully beneath the city’s glow.
At the film’s heart are two storylines. First, we have the hitman Wong Chi-ming (Leon Lai), who’s too cool for school but dreams of retiring from his dangerous gig. His agent (Michelle Reis), madly in love with him, navigates this with all the emotional maturity of a love-struck teenager, even though she spends most of her time rolling around in bed, caressing the guns and memories he leaves behind. Then, there’s Ho Chi-mo (Takeshi Kaneshiro), a mute ex-con who spends his nights breaking into businesses and forcibly selling their products. In between his antics, he falls for a girl named Charlie (Charlie Yeung), who drags him into her own romantic drama.
Like Chungking Express’s nocturnal cousin, Fallen Angels dabbles in themes of isolation, longing, and the often absurd pursuit of connection. Everyone’s chasing something—love, freedom, or simply a sense of purpose—but they’re all so tragically terrible at it. The characters drift through the city, often missing their marks (and each other), caught in a cycle of desire that’s more frustrating than fulfilling. In many ways, the film meditates on the fleeting nature of human relationships and the inevitable loneliness of modern life, all set against a city that’s perpetually in motion, much like the restless souls it houses.
Visually, Wong Kar-wai, with the help of cinematographer Christopher Doyle, turns Hong Kong into a dizzying carnival of colors, skewed angles, and motion blur. The use of wide-angle lenses creates a warped, claustrophobic feeling, making the city both expansive and suffocating. Everything is bathed in a kaleidoscope of fluorescent light, as if the entire film were shot from the inside of a broken jukebox. These exaggerated visuals mirror the emotional disarray of the characters—distorted, frantic, and constantly on the verge of collapse. It’s a mesmerizing mess of style, but one that occasionally feels like it’s trying a bit too hard to be cool.
Leon Lai plays the dispassionate hitman with a blankness that is almost comical—whether it’s intentional or not, who can say? Michelle Reis, as the smitten agent, spends much of the film embodying longing itself, but her obsession never quite evolves beyond a collection of slow-motion stares. The real standout, though, is Takeshi Kaneshiro as the mute delinquent. His physical performance brings a welcome dose of slapstick absurdity to the film, breaking up the melancholic monotony with some much-needed comic relief. Charlie Yeung’s Charlie, however, feels more like a plot device than a fully fleshed-out character, there simply to torment poor Ho with her unrequited love woes.
This is where Fallen Angels stumbles. The film’s pacing is as erratic as its characters’ lives. Moments of brilliance—those gorgeously composed scenes and poignant reflections on loneliness—are often interrupted by bewildering bursts of chaos. The film shifts gears from noirish introspection to slapstick humor with the subtlety of a car crash, leaving the viewer alternately entranced and exhausted. It’s the cinematic equivalent of riding a roller coaster that never quite finds its rhythm, though some might argue that’s part of its charm.
Watching Fallen Angels feels like wandering through a city at 3 a.m., when everything is both too loud and too quiet, and the air is thick with unspoken stories. Wong Kar-wai has always excelled at capturing that sense of urban ennui, and here it’s amplified to a surreal extreme. Personally, the film struck me as a visual poem—one that I admired but couldn’t fully connect with. There’s beauty in the mess, but sometimes, it’s hard to see past the clutter of stylistic flourishes and reach the emotional core.
If you’re into arthouse cinema, worship neon lights, and don’t mind a film that’s more about mood than plot, Fallen Angels is right up your alley. But if you prefer your movies with a bit more narrative coherence, this might feel like a beautifully shot, slightly pretentious fever dream. Either way, it’s hard to deny Wong Kar-wai’s unique flair—even when it’s a bit self-indulgent.
