EL ANGEL GABRIEL Review: Hong Kong Action Fan Service Fuels The Dogma In Angel Vazquez’s Debut Indie Feature
I largely credit actor José Manuel for bringing a lot of my attention to the goings-on of martial arts action fandom in Puerto Rico, particularly since his heyday stardom with El Testigo (The Witness). It’s been fun keeping up with his stuff, and even more worthwhile catching onto new talent that’s come his way as a result, including but not limited to actor Angel Vazquez, who’s collaborated with Manuel on multiple occasions, in addition to developing his own projects to date.
Following his latest return to this year’s tenth Urban Action Showcase & Expo in New York City, five years after presenting his award-winning short, Atrápame, the momentum now shifts in Vazquez’s favor with more than a year’s work put in to complete his own independent feature debut, El Angel Gabriel. For this, we get Vazquez in a title capacity from his own script, as it dives right into the self-made vigilantism of Gabriel, a devout Christian man raised accordingly as the middle sibling of two sisters raised around the same values. A self-employed P.I., he’s a man whose occupation is best described as someone who brings truth to light, exposing liars, cheaters, and crooks of all kinds.
Some sting operations are a walk in the park, mostly. Others tend to require a more heavy-handed way of doing things. As ex-military, Gabriel certainly knows his way around a firearm, though he’s more preferential to his own hands and feet when the going gets tough and the odds are against him, and for a man who walks by faith, it’s usually enough. Still, that faith is often tested when reflecting on the vicious crime that has since left his younger sister, Layla, comatose and fighting for her life, a crime for which he has spent a year blaming himself for not preventing when he thought he could have – the same period in which he’s been plying his trade to dispense some holy justice whilst in search of Layla’s elusive attacker.
Of course, when he’s not on the job or working out, or tending to Layla, he’s confiding in his local priest about his woes, sometimes reluctantly as he doesn’t always look forward to being lectured. It’s not until one day, however, when Gabriel finally gets brought up to speed with a major breakthrough – a key piece of evidence that could finally bring him closer to the end of his search for the man responsible for his younger sister’s suffering. Regardless of whether or not Gabriel finds him, however, the real question that awaits answering pertains to just how far he will go before losing himself completely in his quest for retribution.
El Angel Gabriel is about as rough around the edges as most humble independent film productions of this kind are. Penned by Vazquez, who also produced the pic, there’s a steady balance between the film’s more serious delivery opposite its moments of jest and even one scene that dives right into straight up toilet humor. There’s decent acting to be seen from some of the cast, and while I’ll leave it to the viewer to decide how most of the acting translates, I thought most of the acting, while hit-or-miss at times, did the trick in carrying the film when needed. It’s definitely a win for Vazquez, though, in a debut lead role that also gives him a chance to be an actor in a feature film, which serves him feasibly well.
To that end, Vazquez has all the youthful action star magnetism you could probably hope for, and the physique to boot, as well as the screenfighting chops he’s picked up over the years in pursuit of keeping martial arts action alive in his region, and it certainly helps in packaging the film rightly for action fans, as the action is where it will surely sell the most. There’s roughly six or seven action sequences, out of which five sees our star crossing blows with the film’s resident fall guys, employing his own share of fight choreography duties alongside Manuel and team member Alfonso Rodriguez. Vazquez also wrote and directed, as well as produced the pic, in a grueling schedule often hampered by the 2020 pandemic until its completion early last year.
The result, with El Angel Gabriel, is a palatable action comedy with enough gravitas to share for its more dramatic and serious moments, shepherded by a nascent, charismatic leading man in Vazquez, and largely by-the-numbers screenfighting action fresh out of the Jackie Chan/Andy Long Nguyen playbook… And what a delightful playbook it is, especially when it comes with a fitting blooper reel to endulge in as the credits roll, no matter what your religious denomination is.
Native New Yorker. Been writing for a long time now, and I enjoy what I do. Be nice to me!