‘Black Angel’ is adorned with special visuals but mired by poor storytelling
Director Roy William Neill, for all his abilities to splash his picture with ambitious flourishes, can rarely make heads or tails of what his 1946 effort Black Angel is trying to accomplish story-wise. By the time the film closes, the biggest challenge for the viewer is trying to understand why he or she should care at all about everything that transpired. The plotting lacks a foundational logic for the themes to ring true or to mean something for that matter.