MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*
If you know in advance that ANGEL is primarily a modern-day superspy flick, you may think that the title suggests a blend between that genre and the nascent genre of the Hong Kong chopsockie. What the viewer gets, though, is a pretty low-wattage effort, even if it's one of the few 1960s secret agent flicks to focus on a female hero.
Lily Ho plays Luo Na, alias "Agent 009," and her assignment is to infiltrate a gang of crooks called the Dark Angels. They really seem to be nothing but crooks, with no ties to international espionage and no plans to conquer the world. Nevertheless, even though Luo is doing the job of a police undercover agent, she has a smattering of uncanny spy-weapons, like a metal-edged card that can be used to disarm enemies or a perfume-spray filled with knockout gas.
I have no information on the films that director Lo Wei helmed before ANGEL, so it's not impossible that this was one of his first movies that needed strong action sequences. Lily Ho does project pretty good authority in her few fight-scenes, but the only one that catches fire is a battle with a mobster's jealous girlfriend (Fanny Fann). Later Lo Wei would distinguish himself with entries like Bruce Lee's big success FIST OF FURY and my personal favorite of the works I've seen, VENGEANCE OF A SNOW GIRL. But ANGEL is no more than a period curiosity, made risible by the repeated use of musical passages from the library of 007 cinema.