That Angel Look

It's tough for canny London cabbie Angel to resist the Spice Girl-like charms of low-budget fashion mavens Thalia, Amy and Lyn (collectively TAL) in this wise, witty and relentlessly English mystery. Star of a series (Angel City, 1995, etc.) that has yet to find the American audience it merits, Angel owns an unlicensed cab and knows the city well. The leggy threesome need a driver as they move from bar to bar, parading short skirts, black tights and cleavage as they show their wares to eager secretaries anxious to purchase fashion on the cheap. When TAL need a photographer, Angel produces Sarge, who is low-cost, reasonably competent and a total sleaze. Sarge soon dies with a stab wound to the head. The trio falls under suspicion as connections to white-supremacist politics and witchcraft are uncovered. Angel is repeatedly grilled by two comedic coppers, and his delivery of some TAL merchandise coincides with a minor drug war. What's worse is that Amy, Angel's favorite TAL girl, stops returning his calls. While Ripley doesn't really have much of a murder mystery working here, the coppers' badinage is truly priceless, and, with Angel as a guide, lowlife London has never been a more seductive proposition. (Mar.)