AVENGING ANGELO (2002) **1/2 Anthony Quinn's final film. He's either acting with typical brilliance, or you can easily see his legendary life force making the transition to another world before your eyes. He knows it's happening, too-he speaks softly, but with wonderment curiosity, even amusement. He's made films about hard work, and love, and brawling of every kind, and everything else that was his; why not death? Especially now that he has a better bead on it. Sylvester Stallone wants nothing more than to be his foil, and performs admirably in doing so. It's a pity that Stallone has been offered so few scripts worthy of developing the softer side of his personae, as it's most certainly there, and far more interesting than the cartoon that Hollywood so regularly demands from him. The film ultimately fails to do absolute historic justice to its principals due to the combination of a script that's not quite sure where it's going, and production that's sure that it's going too many different places and insisting that it hurry up and get to all of them. The story line wanders aimlessly into interesting, entertaining, and entirely uncontrived situations but the problem is that whenever ambivalence towards traditional plot forms gains sufficient momentum to evoke admiration they quickly focus the film, and usually on something stupid. Madeleine Stowe is a wonderful actress: she can act, she's beautiful, she can make you laugh, she can make you cry, she can probably sing and dance--why would anyone waste all that talent setting her up as a totem for dreary women married to materialistic yuppies, bored about it but without the interior drive to remove themselves to somewhere better? As if. Anyone can do that, and so much of the target audience can't tell the difference anyway. For all of their machismo and star power, the film belongs more to Stowe than Stallone or Quinn. When she's allowed room she carries things well, when she's forced into yet another cliché situation calculated to endear her to gutless and guileful creatures who will desperately wish to identify with her without confessing distinctions...she acquits herself as well as you could hope under the circumstances, but it's not particularly worthy stuff. They do the same thing to Stallone-his sensitive-side scenes are almost immediately neutralized by tired old gangster gags. On the other hand, it's a bit vulgar to even admit that you notice such things, when the casket of the king lion is passing by.
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