"Angels Don't Sleep Here" Staring: Dana Ashbrook as Michael/Jesse, Kelly Rutherford as Kate, Robert Patrick as Russell Stark and if I try to figure out any more I'm afraid my head will explode. **WARNING!!** In this review I will be giving away major plot points (like the ending of the movie). First, I'm gonna set one thing straight. On the box cover it says that Robert Patrick (as Russell Stark) is the star of the movie. He really is not...this is an advertising ploy. The star of the movie is really Dana Ashbrook (as Michael/Jesse Daniels). They say Robert is the star so they will have an excuse to plaster "Terminator 2" across the box in big letters. Although Russell *is* a bit similar to the T-1000 in that they both have about the same range of facial expressions as an iguana. The movie opens with a bunch of hand-held camera shots a la Blair Witch Project as we follow a motion-blurred teenager through the woods. The cameraman seems intent on pruning the trees by knocking down every branch in sight with the camera lens. This is followed by some really cool shots of Michael driving through a town in his jeep - interspersed with flashbacks of a couple of children we will later learn are Michael and his twin brother Jesse - and accompanied by some really cool music. I already like this movie! Then the plot starts up...and the dizzy feeling I got from the Blair Witch photography turns into a pounding headache. The plot becomes so confusing that it makes Einstein's Relativity seem like child's play. The one thing I was sure of from the start: Russell did it. Question: why do all the crooked cops Robert plays have to chew gum *constantly* (see Rogue Force)? Anyway, I was suspicious of him from the moment he walked into Michael's apartment uninvited. For one thing, Michael looked uncomfortable and wary of Russell, and for another, as Russell leaves he tells Michael "Y'know you should keep your door locked." *Any* character in a suspense/thriller type movie that says something like that is immediately suspicious! Michael has returned to the town to find out what, exactly, happened to Jesse, who disappeared years earlier in the forest Blair Witch and was never heard from again. Apparently Michael made a promise to his mother - who, for all we know is dead by now - to find Jesse. He says he's felt like he's being watched ever since he returned. Probably because of all the surveillance cameras in his apartment. So far so good; my headache is starting to abate. Michael is attacked while walking down the street one night by a figure dressed in black, who pins him to the wall of a building and says "nice to have you back" in a decidedly feminine voice. So either the 'watcher' is a man who does voice impersonations, or Michael got beat up by a girl...twice. These random attack scenes confuse me. In one of them Michael is punched in the face with enough force to knock him unconscious, but he never even gets a bruise! Okay, now I have to introduce the characters. I have come to the conclusion that there are too many characters in this movie. We learn that Michael is a forensic pathologist. Obviously not a very good one though since he is asked to take a look at a skeleton found in the Blair Witch Forest, picks up a bone, and says "this isn't Jesse. Jesse had a fracture on his right femur." How the heck he could make that conclusion when he was looking at a *left* femur is beyond me. Trust me here - I froze the screen at that point and sat in front of it for 10 minutes with my Human Anatomy book open to the chapter on bones! Hmmm...does that make me crazy? Oh, well... Anyway, he starts working with a woman named April Williams at the local forensic lab - which seems to be located in the basement of...something. Possibly a hospital. April is desperate for money to fund a project she is working on. This is, of course, an important fact but not yet. We also meet a woman named Kate Porter - lawyer and daughter of the mayor - who was a childhood friend of the Daniels twins. She is played by Kelly Rutherford. Kate's boyfriend Jake also happens to be Russell's parter. There's a Native American guy who provides suggestions and words of wisdom to Michael, but I don't think it's ever explained who the heck he is. And there is a brief flashback of a Native American woman who gave Michael some sort of pendant. Just ignore her. She's not important. Okay, back to the plot. Somehow, Jesse's disappearance is linked to the murder of an Aboriginal rights activist named David Roy, but nobody seems to know how. (I had to watch this movie three times to even figure out who David Roy *is*!) There is apparently a conspiracy surrounding Roy's death. We know this because Michael says the soil samples found on Roy's shoes don't match the soil samples found in his hair and ear, although why that is important is beyond me. At any rate, this conspiracy involves the mayor of the city - a man whose wife affectionately refers to as "that son of a b*tch!". Let's just say the mayor and Roy were not on very good terms. But it becomes obvious that the mayor didn't kill him when, as he is standing next to his limo talking to reporters, he is shot in the back of the head. This happens at the exact moment that his daughter is holding a press conference in which she was apparently going to blow the lid on the whole operation. Coincidence? Don't be stupid. We then see a man dressed in black - complete with ski mask, a hooded sweatshirt and a pair of white surgical gloves - scale down the side of the building across the street. He is chased by police and a group of good samaritans (y'know, those really obnoxious bystanders that really aren't any help at all?) until he blows up a car via remote switch that blocks their path. Shortly afterwards we see Russell shooting in a random direction and radioing the direction he saw the perpetrator heading in. Yeah, right. He also collects blood from the scene that he claims will help identify the shooter. He gives it to April to analyze, which is kind of stupid since she sold him the blood in the first place. Oops...I'm getting ahead of myself here aren't I? The blood matches two people - Michael and Jesse. Of course, Michael concludes that this is proof that Jesse is still alive. But April says that without Jesse (dead or alive) there is no proof to point to either brother since they share the same DNA. Excuse me for a moment...I need to find some Tylenol. Meanwhile, Michael has fallen in love (or maybe just lust) with Kate. Gratuitous sex scene ensues. Later on, Kate receives a picture of said gratuitous sex scene - taken from the building across the street - via fax machine with a little note from "Jesse". She and Michael con their way into the apartment it was taken from to find pictures of them dating back to David Roy's death taped to the walls of an otherwise bare apartment along with the words "do you believe in reincarnation" finger-painted in blood-red paint. Kate wonders "what kind of mind" would do such a thing while Michael takes a sample of the paint. Meanwhile, Russell finds the fax that Michael dropped, rather stupidly, while he and Kate were being chased by Russell and Jake. Of course, this picture does not make Jake too happy (*wink, wink*). They enter the same apartment Michael and Kate vacated seconds earlier. Russell takes one look at the mural and gives a blunt version of Kate's earlier statement: "Well, now, that's some sick shit!" Michael and Kate split up and go about their own separate investigations into the whole case. They meet up again in the Blair Witch forest. Now comes the confusing part. Try to stick with me here. Now we find out that Michael actually died in the woods after David Roy was murdered and the person who everybody thinks is Michael is really Jesse, who everybody thinks is dead. Jesse (f/k/a Michael) then reveals that David Roy was murdered by... drumroll please...Russell! Gee...what a surprise. Russell then chased Jesse through the woods until Jesse met up with Michael. Then the brothers split up. Russell followed the wrong brother and Michael was killed. Therefore, Jesse has been letting everybody believe he was really Michael since Michael never saw anything and was therefore no threat to Russell. Still with me? As Jesse is explaining all of this to Kate, we see a man walking through the forest towards them, completely dressed in black, wearing surgical gloves and carrying a gun. He is still wearing a ski mask even though it really doesn't serve much purpose anymore. Now comes the fun part. By Hollywood standard, the first shot fired at the hero is never meant to hit anything - it is merely fired to announce that a fight is about to take place. Therefore, the same man who shot the mayor in the head from a window across a street and several floors up and firing into a crowd, can stand a mere twenty feet from Jesse and miss by a mile. The man finally takes off his ski mask, although if you didn't know who he was by now you obviously haven't been paying attention, and demands to know where Michael is. (For those of you who are confused, he is actually looking for Jesse, but he doesn't seem to know that because all Hollywood bad guys are naturally dumb as rocks). Somehow Jesse ends up behind him and tackles him to the ground, knocking his gun away. The resulting fight scene alternates between hyper speed and slow motion. This does absolutely nothing for my headache. This lasts until Russell attempts to choke Kate to death as the supposedly out-for-the-count Jesse lies nearby. Jesse conveniently waits until one second before Kate's lungs explode to tackle Russell, smashing his head on a rock that just happened to be nearby. And that's basically it. Jesse and Kate ride off into the sunset together. Roll end credits. What? You expected something else? Maybe Russell's body to turn into liquid metal? ~Diandra Hollman...or Agent Hollman or DiandraH or whatever you know me as...sheesh...I have too many names!