The short stories on this film are so surreal and mesmerising. This film is the most refreshing of all of the director's work. Good way to reflect the passion of the youth

Strapping neon lights in the dark underbelly of Hong Kong sets the stage for this uber-hip tale of isolationist tragedy of love-shorn, fallen heroes as they try to make their way amongst the cold heartless throngs of civilization. Where connections of life are hostile, our players literally create from scratch a method to link a distant humanity to their otherwise meaningless lives. The result is pure visual bliss. To not be pleasurably mesmerized by this flick is a treason best left without a conviction. The story is a haphazard scramble of lost souls loosely linked by a cinematic art form best left undefined. The direction is just as indescribably perfect, like putting into words the puissance of Mona Lisa's hinting smile. The camera man must have enjoyed a cocktail of methamphetamines washed down with steroids, the result being a wonderfully frenzied complex of voyeuristic energies and incongruous situations whose symbolic import are indelibly brought together in this flick's perfect ending. The only problem was that, as in all of life, the good times all must come to a painful end, a lustful need for more conjugated to an emptiness that life verite' seems unwilling to fulfill. Genruk of Evil Eye Reviews

Wong Kar-Wai is the modern cinema's premier poet of loss and longing. His characteristically enigmatic films capture the erratic rhythms and ephemeral nature of memory and torment: fleeting, fragmented, wandering only to return obsessively to its central foci.While Wong's debut, "As Tears Go By", was a relatively straightforward commercial riff on Scorsese's "Mean Streets" and the 'heroic bloodshed' style of Hong Kong street opera pioneered by action maestro John Woo, he would establish with "Days of Being Wild" and "Chungking Express" a signature style characterized by visual bravura mixed with interwoven and intensely introspective tales of emotionally isolated young people adrift in the shadow kingdom of urban postmodernity. Eschewing more traditional narrative formats for an elliptical self-referentiality that mirrors memory itself, Wong's films are rarely instantly accessible, but reward the patient viewer with intoxicating moods and contemplative brilliance."Fallen Angels" was originally conceived as something of a 'nightside' sequel/companion piece to "Chungking Express." Structurally and thematically it mirrors the latter with two separate plot lines, each centering on a pair of twentysomethings (a hit-man and his female 'agent' in one and a strange, mute confidence man and the girl he takes a shine to in the other) in search of love but unable or unwilling to find it in each other. Assorted camera tricks, fish eye lenses, slow motion sequences and the strategic use of a gloriously bittersweet pop soundtrack all help to capture a mood of frantic desperation and the distortions of memory and longing.Wong also invokes the first of his 'art' films, "Days of Being Wild," returning to its concern with the loss and meaning of identity in an impersonal world. Leon Lai's hit-man and Takeshi Kaneshiro's petty criminal both try - and fail - to remake their lives on this straight and narrow. One of them manages a peace of sorts with his failure - the other goes out out in a bittersweet blaze of glory. Wong also explores the way in which longing (mis)identifies others: his characters view each other through the distorted lens memory and desire - what they see is not reality, but a projection of their own dreams - and when the truth is made manifest, it is always the cruelest blow.

I was first introduced to this film about ten years ago (man, its already been ten years!!), along with Takeshi Kitano by a friend who was really into Asian cinema. At the time Beat Takeshi and Wong Kar Wai were not well known in the US at all. All the little fan boys (myself included) were still stuck on John Woo. My friend handed me a bootleg of "Fallen Angels" along with a copy of Beat Takeshi's "Violent Cop". I went home and put them in and thought, "what the hell am I watching!!!?!?? "Fallen Angels" had to be the weirdest, most unorthodox, most elliptical piece of film I'd ever looked at. EVERY SHOT looked weird and wrong. It seemed the director looked at every rule in the Hollywood filmmaker's guide and did the exact opposite! Also, it looked like the whole thing was shot with a security camera. Everything was fish-eyed. Too strange. But something about it made me keep watching. It actually took me a couple of tries to get all the way through it. It was just so odd, and hallucinatory.Then finally, I was able to get through the entire thing in one sitting, and that's when the magic happened. You MUST watch this film all the way through till the end in one sitting in order to "get it". The very end of the film is when the illuminating flash happens and when the film suddenly makes sense. If you do, I promise you, it will be a magical, sad and sweet, and extremely rewarding experience. This film by miles transcends the gangster genre. It is so many things at once. More than anything, in fact, it is a love story. But a love story in the same way (odd as it may sound) that "Last Picture Show" is a love story. It's about being madly in love with someone who will never be able to love you back.I actually liken this film to some of Sam Shepard's absurdist theater pieces from the 60s and 70s. Where for much of the duration you don't quite understand what you're looking at, although it seems the director MUST have some sort of plan, and then, at the end, all of the strands come together and it makes total sense.