Consider, if you would, the above poster for Sylvester Stallone's Avenging Angelo.
If you're advertising a thriller you make the poster dark and serious. Oh, and there must be weaponery, preferably a gun. Add to that the title and you've got a humourless mafia revenge flick. And that's a movie I can't be bothered to see. Seven years not bothered due to it appearing just like Stallone's other tired gansta revenge movie; the Get Carter remake.
So when I finally gave in, that's when the romantic comedy aspect crept up on me. Avenging Angelo is a silly, old fashioned, frothy, romantic gangster themed dramedy.
The nearest comparison is if Skin Deep/Pink Panther director Blake Edwards had made this. It's got Edward's 60's style visuals, a Bill Conti score that's reminicent of Mancini's classier works, mixed with Edward's trademark humorous absurdity and sharp comic timing.
However, like Edwards work, this isn't perfect either. Many gags fall flat; for every sucess (the Brute aftershave joke that runs through the film) there's crap ones (the farting squirrel / farting corpse jokes).
Stallone tries his hand at comedy again, but isn't quite up to it. Fortunately, he's the straight man. Madeline Stowe get the plum role of the girl Stallone's been assigned to protect from afar, all his career. She's spoilt, eratic, skatty, impulsive, neurotic and completely adorable in the role, that reminds one of Teri Hatcher in Lois & Clark or Cybil Sheppard in Moonlighting.
And hot too. I know the movie was filmed back in 2002 but Stowe, wherever she is these days, is a righteous honey. Viva la Stowe!!!
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