DANGEROUS HEART premiered on cable TV before going to videotape, but a more fitting venue for this heredity-vs.-environment thriller would have been the silent screen, where quainter notions of good and evil once sneered at each other in florid mime.
Virtuous housewife Carol MacLean (Lauren Holly) is left bereaved after her husband, an unstable undercover cop, steals a fortune from Oakland drug kingpin Angel (Tim Daly) and is killed by the crime lord's minions. Angel doesn't know where the money is hidden, though, and in order to dig for
clues, the leather-clad bad guy gives himself a makeover and emerges as Angelo, sensitive artist and widower. Thus disguised, he befriends lonely Carol, gently courts her at her home, and searches all the dresser drawers once the heroine's lissome back is turned. But will behaving like the perfect
romantic gentleman reform the ferocious crook? Angel/Angelo denies to skeptical henchmen that he's been tamed by Carol's Catholic-girl loving, but at the last moment he turns his gun against his own comrades and goes down saving the wife of the man he murdered. The money, unfound, goes to a
landfill.
Daly works hard to be menacing, but it's an uphill battle; flamboyant, devilishly handsome Angel looks more like a rock music promoter than Scarface. Holly's Carol is smarter and more assertive than one might expect for a waiflike woman sleeping with the enemy, but both leads are overshadowed by
showy turns from supporting players Alice Carter and the always-interesting Joe Pantoliano as Angel's rebellious underworld lieutenants--two scenery-chewing nasties whose stylish villainy would befit a Batman adventure more than a routine picture like this. (Violence, sex, substance abuse.) leave a comment