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Many reviews to date regarding the 1989 film 'Johnny Handsome' claimed that the Walter Hill crime thriller was a slow moving, poorly aimed feature. Since I gave the film a chance I came to the conclusion that those critics probably watched the opening half hour before skipping off to the salon with their BFF's to get their back, crack and sack waxed and flap wrists over watercress soup and Madonna music videos. I'm guessing that was late '80's Hollywood anyway, I don't really want to know the specifics...
I found it thoroughly enjoyable, 'Johnny Handsome', that was; very influential (inter-textual references made by great modern directors such as John Woo with the likes of 'Hard Target' have nodded in Handsome's direction) and in regard to issues still proving highly debatable today contained within the film, it remains far ahead of its time.
'Johnny Handsome' is the story of the downtrodden and tragic John Sedley, played with humility and stark realism by Mickey Rourke. Left to fend for himself since the age of 13 after his prostitute mother died and having been born with a great genetic deformity that has rendered his face as badly deformed as that of the Elephant Man, he is a joke, he's unwanted, unloved and therefore has turned to crime to survive. He cannot talk properly due to the absence of a formal education and also as a result of a hare lip.
Sedley is asked by his closest friend Mikey Chalmette, played humbly and earnestly by Scott Wilson, out of desperation to help him set up a heist in their hometown of New Orleans.
Double-crossed and left for dead, Sedley is the victim of an attempted murder in prison, which sets him on the road to redemption when a doctor offers a trial of radical reconstructive surgery to cure his genetic deformity as he enters the witness protection program. But smiling darkly on the edge of every scene is Police Lieutenant A.Z. Drones, played softly yet sinisterly by a fresh-faced Morgan Freeman, a man who continually claims that the seemingly fragile and long-damaged Sedley is a born criminal who will offend again, regardless of the efforts of his redeemers to help him become a part of the civilised world.
So when Sedley undergoes his miraculous transformation, is given a voice to speak with and learns to exercise his past demons, he takes an honest job. But with Drones on his back like the ghost of his conscience, it isn't long before he is contemplating using his new identity to draw the double-crossing heist partners who put him in prison and now believe he is dead into a revenge plot, playing them off against each other in the process.
Johnny Handsome boasts one of the finest lists of actors dedicated to what is essentially a small scale but very well written crime drama. It plays off a single strand narrative but allows all its key characters to play openly and occasionally run riot as they tend to in all Walter Hill films. Everyone has a story and if not, they come with clever pieces of worldly wisdom seldom found in movie characters. Morgan Freeman for one being world renowned for playing such characters.
But also with a supporting cast including Forest Whittaker, Lance Henriksen and Ellen Barkin, you're treated to the finest drama you could expect from an '80's crime thriller, that particular decade not exactly known for its drama over absent minded action films and comedies.
New Orleans itself plays a fine character in the film, breathing colour into its scenes. From the docks, the narrow streets and the colourful nightclubs of the French Quarter and the unmistakeably distinctive graveyards right down to the architecture within the apartments and houses, the city gives this film an undeniable sense of place that few others could have provided. This is also a regular feature of Hill's older films such as The Driver, The Warriors, 48 Hours and Southern Comfort. Hill is as much an artist painting a picture as he is a director of unique acting talent.
But Sedley's affliction is the main theme of the film, something that not only draws out the worst in the worst people but often the worst of the best. It's difficult to tell whether Lt. A.Z. Drones is either a good man or a villain because he believes that Sedley's new face is just a mask hiding the ugly truth of who he used to be and who he will always be deep down. Throughout the film and towards the end, Sedley comes to believe that this is true and that he might actually be redeemed simply by coming to accept it but much of the story is about the conflicting emotions of a man being torn in both directions by good and bad influences, weakened by a lifetime of torment and neglect. In many respects, it's a moral tale, which is surprising but in a good way.
Maybe 'Johnny Handsome' was too honest, thoughtful and too unconventionally cool for critics expecting yet another Walter Hill all-male shoot em up after he gave the world 'Extreme Prejudice' and 'Red Heat' but maybe it was Hill's decision to wear his grizzled heart on his sleeve, to allow his main character to fall in love and to want forgiveness, that let down his 98% male audience. After all, he hasn't made such a statement since, yet 'Johnny Handsome' is possibly the most mature piece of work in Hill's back catalogue and although it didn't work so well in 1989, I feel it's more relevant now than it may ever be, in a vain world obsessed with looks yet one that is set off balance by a sympathetic minority that understands the ugliness of this world represents the reality so frequently avoided!
score 8/10
DanLives1980 13 August 2011
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2473590/ |
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18-3-2021 00:07:19