`FALLEN ANGELS' RISES TO THE OCCASION.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

Wong Kar-Wei is Hong Kong's world class art film director, and that never has been more evident than in his latest stateside release, ``Fallen Angels.''

Made in between his reputation-establishing ``Chungking Express'' and the Argentina-set ``Happy Together,'' ``Angels'' is the most typically Hong Kongish of Wong's movies.

But, while it's partially about a weary hit man and it boasts flashes of startling, brutal violence, ``Angels'' hardly resembles the John Woo school of sentimental gangster bullet ballets. Indeed, it's a visually dazzling extension of ``Chungking,'' an examination of loneliness, missed connections and unutterable desires in the crowded, chaotic former colony.

Like ``Chungking,'' ``Angels'' runs along two barely connected story lines, only this time they intermingle rather than play out separately. Our contract killer is one Wong Chi-Ming (Leon Lai). Like most such movie animals, he wants to quit the deadly business but seems ever-burdened by one final job.

Wong's business - indeed, his life - is conducted by a woman known only as the Agent (Michele Reis). Though they rarely meet, she gives him his assignments and, when he's not home, lovingly cleans up his spartan railroad flat. She is also hopelessly in love with him, but he has a thing against mixing business with pleasure. When it looks like the business relationship is going to end, her despair metastasizes.

Plot line 2 focuses on a big, mute ex-convict, He Zhiwu (Takeshi Kaneshiro), who lives with his father at the crummy residential hotel the Agent often uses for a weeping place. He hasn't spoken since he ate a bad can of pineapple at age 5, but that doesn't prevent him from, uh, making friends. At night, he breaks into food stalls, then strongarms reluctant passers-by into consuming large amounts of ice cream and such.

Two things widen his social horizons. Given a video camera, he drives his dying father nuts by recording him against his will. And he falls in love with the distraught Cherry (Charlie Young), a woman obsessed with the man who recently dumped her. Perhaps ``Angels' '' greatest pleasure is watching this eccentric, misanthropic galoot grow into a feeling human being.

But that's not the only thing this movie has going for it. Filmed in dazzling bursts of nighttime color by Wong's ever-inventive cinematographer Chris Doyle, the film has an edgy yet graceful, urban rhythm to it. Wong is also brilliantly attuned to the telling, pop cultural reference: an emotionally loaded jukebox song; the tragically trendy fashion choices of a possessive punkette (Karen Mok); the way intrusive videotaping actually can connect people for whom traditional forms of communication have failed.

Mostly, though, Wong is a genius at capturing the bizarre, overwrought or self-numbing behaviors unhappy people indulge in when they feel they have no one to turn to. More than a poet of modern alienation, it's almost as if Wong Kar-Wei invented the whole, melancholy feeling.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Fallen Angels'' (Not rated; violence, sex, language, drug use).

The stars: Leon Lai, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Charlie Young, Michele Reis, Karen Mok.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Wong Kar-Wei. Produced by Wong and Jeff Lau. Released by Kino International.

Running time: One hour, 36 minutes.

Playing: Music Hall, Beverly Hills.

Our rating: Four Stars.