Angel Town (1990)

Admirable film.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

I thought this was a good movie, and even if the acting was bad..If you are a true martial arts fan..Then you should definitely get this movie if given the chance..And just a little more information Is the star Olive Gruner ( Was a kick-boxing Champion at one time). Every martial arts fan should own this movie...I think the action was good..And i have seen this movie and been trying to find it for years and now after all this time iam going to be able to add this great, low budget, martial arts movie to my collection..And even though it does have its down faults It is still one of the best martial arts films I have seen...

Angel Town (1990) Things I learned from this movie:1) Don't move to East L.A. 2) French Graduate students are surprisingly lethal. 3) If you're white and have to live in the ghetto, it helps to make friends with the disabled Vietnam vet next door who keeps an M-16 in his house. 4) Every Spanish person is either called 'Holmes' or 'Essy'. 5) If you're a gang-banger, the top thing you can do is drive-by frat parties on university campuses in front of tons and tons of witnesses. 6) The more people you commit a violent crime in front of, the less likely anyone will phone the cops. 7) If you're in LA and you phone 9/11 they won't come until the end of the movie. 8) During a gang fight in the woods, always have your people appear two to three at a time until the middle of the fight then have some other guys pull up in vans. 9) Machine guns solve everything. 10)Chicks love getting naked in the cemetery.Needless to say, another classic from Oliver G. Don't miss this remarkable slice of early '90s mayhem.

Angel Town (1990) stars Oliver Gruner who plays a Jean-Claude wannabe who's on a college scholarship to an L.A. University (does USC have a Savate Team?). He rents a room from a troubled single mother who's son is constantly threatened by a local street gang. They want him to join them but they do a very bad job trying to convince him (daily harassments and beatings). His troubles remind Oliver of his life back home (he too had a trouble past as a youth). When the gang starts to mess with him (they affectionately call him "Frenchie") Oliver goes "Segal" on those tough punks. The movie has a cheap, sleazy feel to it (but it was shot on film). The acting is either horrible (Gruner makes JCVD look like a world class actor) or over the top and the fight scenes are ho-hum at best. Surprisingly, this film is strangely enjoyable. It has an eeriness that compels viewers of bad videos to sit down and watch.Recommended for bad movie lovers.

Angel Town is an excellent example of a bad bad film: not just so bad its good, or so incompotent its funny, but so bad it is really, really bad. The action scenes are boring, the acting is elementary school level at best, and the production values are non-existent.Olivier Gruner was being promoted as some kind of martial arts champion around the time this film was released here, but I've never heard anything about him since. I'm not surprised about that, really, because he has even less personality than Jean-Claude Van Damme or Steven Seagal, which is saying quite a lot. Needless to say, Gruner has never made it to the A-list since then.The editing on this film is attrocious. I think they used the same footage of Olivier and the gangbangers running down the same alley way at least six times. The cinematography is so flat and dry that it looks like it was filmed using an old Betamax video camera from the 1970s. The story is strictly by-the-numbers.All in all, don't waste your time. Go out and rent a Van Damme or Seagal film instead. At least they appear in films where the director, editor, and screenwriter know what the hell they're doing.