Prizzi's Honor

Prizzi's Honor enthralled me with masterful performances by Jack Nicholson as the enforcer for the Prizzi mob family; Kathleen Turner as the mysterious blonde he falls for and who turns out to be a professonal assassin; and Angelica Huston, as the daughter who struggles to regain the honor of a Prizzi and the love of her life. The paradoxical outcome of the Mafia's ethic of loyalty which leads to the killing of those we love, raised to the level of tragedy in The Godfather, here unfolds in a black tale of macabre humor, rendered with flawless timing of its unfolding twists and turns. The humor does not demean the genre of Mafia gangster films, but rather pays tribute to the legacy, replacing tragic irony with dark humor. A masterpiece without a false note or weak performance.

Comedy? Not really. Drama? Little, if any. Tragicomedy? Possibly, some, but not developed as such. The plot is too complicated for its own good. The pacing is much, much too slow. The acting is quite solid all-round, but that is, unfortunately, not enough to save the film. The action is daft. The tension is low and both poorly built and utilized. The characters... I could *not* get behind anyone's motivation. Also, to quote Team America: World Police(more specifically, the character of Kim Jong Il(who I understand is quite a "character" for real, as well)) "Why is everyone so f**ing stupid?!" To be honest, it's mainly the mobsters. Why? I "get" wanting to make gangsters look dumb and inept, but... you might want to check the level of reality at some point, too. Or make sure you have your audience check their brains at the door. This started out almost poetically... slow, building... beautiful images. Then it starts trying to be funny. Much of it is dark comedy, but very little of it actually works. Not long after, it starts trying to be dramatic... here, it fails even more-so. With Nicholson being painfully dimwitted and Turner being fairly... easy, slutty, it's just difficult to find reason to sympathize with these people(and let's not even *mention* the notion of liking them). I doubt there's a single credible character in there. I think what takes the cake here, though, is the ending... or, rather, lack thereof. Please, anyone who's seen this, let's be honest; this movie doesn't "end", it just stops. The words "The End" fade onto the screen, followed by the credits, but there's no real closure(not to mention, it came across as tacked-on). To the story, to the characters, to the plot. I recommend this to only the biggest fans of the people involved in making it, and urge most anyone else to just skip this one... it's no great loss. The loss is the great chance that was wasted in the production of this film... with an interesting premise(later made into a Hollywood flick that manages to be more entertaining than this), a (or so I've heard, this is the first of his films I watch) competent director and a highly talented cast, this could have been simply breathtaking. Instead, it's rather moan-inducing. Sad. 6/10

John Huston made movies mainly during the 40's and the 50's. He is well known for some of his great movies like The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (1948), two movies who earned themselves a position on AFI's top 100 list and what many consider to be his best picture ever, 1951's The African Queen which was ranked 17th on AFI's top 100 list. His major collaborations with Humphrey Bogart also made him quite popular in the beginning of his career. Unfortunately, he died in 1987. However, he did not leave us without giving us an 80's classic à la John Huston. Prizzi's Honor was his final stand and what a stand it was. The Mob is probably the topic that has been the most used in Cinema. Movies like Little Caesar (1930) and The Public Enemy (1931) are the young classics that gave us a taste of things to come for the more modern classics such as Goodfellas (1990) and the ultimate movie of all-time, The Godfather (1972) and its terrific sequel, The Godfather Part II (1974). As with every other common movie topic, Hollywood has produced many disappointing movies about the Mob such as Scarface (1983). However, it has produced the ultimate disgrace to the Mob movies with 1998's Mafia which tried to parody The Godfather, Scarface, and many others. This is something that I can not tolerate, to make a parody of such great movies. So looking at Prizzi's Honor, I thought this might be a movie that had a similar objective to Mafia with a few big stars in it. I was mistaken. Charley Partanna (Jack Nicholson) is a wiseguy. At a wedding, he sees a beautiful tall blond woman (Kathleen Turner) with whom he immediately falls in love with. He finally meets this woman. Her name is Irene Walker. He soon finds out that she had made a hit for the Prizzi family, the family of which he is part, the day of the wedding. The two of them fall in love and make plans for marriage. But Irene goes back to California for a few days. During her trip, Charley also learns that a scam has been going on in one of the Casinos owned by the Prizzis and that the man who orchestrated this scam is a man named Marxie Heller. So Charley is sent by the family to get the money back from Marxie. Charley goes to Heller's house and knocks off Heller. He waits for Heller's wife to return as she apparently had something to do with the scam. But surprise surprise for Charley as Heller's wife turns out to be Irene Walker. Charley spares her after she returns half of the stolen money and goes back to Brooklyn claiming he could only find that and he marries Irene. But complications are bound to arise and they do. Huston's smart directing does not allow the viewer to call out a mistake in the movie an Richard Condon's script is intelligent as it releases all its small twists and turns in the correct order at the right moments. One of the key actors in the movie is Anjelica Huston's role as the rejected daughter of a second level boss for the Prizzi family. Without her, the movie would probably not end the way it does. Jealousy, greed, love... these are the principal themes of this black-comedy along with, of course, the theme of murder. But as I said at the beginning, this is a typical Huston classic and is not to be missed.

Director John Huston was 79 years old when he made this...and it shows. The man who started his directing career with the great Maltese Falcon in 1941 is way "out of touch" here. The facts that he was a huge cigar smoker and a "hard" drinker would not have helped his brain age naturally. Anyway the directing is very clunky, the photography pedantic, the continuation (editing) poor and the script only average. Jack Nicholson plays the mentally challenged Mafia hit man Charley Partanna...but his one dimensional performance is boring. Kathleen Turner becomes Mrs. Partanna after an absurd sequence which (I guess) was supposed to be funny. The "expert reviewers" call this a black comedy. Its not really. It is a below par movie which is only very mildly amusing . (more grey than black). Made in 1985, it has already become dated and insignificant. Remarkably...it was nominated for 8 Oscars. It won one...Anjelica Huston (Johns daughter) for best actress in a supporting role. She deserved it.

Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner both are assassins, though when Jack first notices her, he has no idea she, too, is a professional hit-man (hit-woman?). When they fall in love and get married, it seems kind of darkly sweet, but soon there are LOTS of complications--including the mob ordering them to kill each other. How will they work this out? Well, the film manages to do it in a way that I certainly didn't expect. "Prizzi's Honor" is a well made film and it was a sleeper hit back in 1985. However, I've gotta be up front about this one....it just didn't interest me very much. I think there are two main reasons--it should have been funnier and I just don't like most gangster films. There is a HUGE fascination among the public for gangster films, I know, but apart from a few classics, I don't care for the genre at all. So, keep this in mind as you read my review--this guy just isn't into gangster films. Now this isn't to say I hated the film--the acting was quite nice. But I also found the plot needlessly complicated and it's hard caring at all about evil murderers. Worth seeing, perhaps, but to my it just wasn't up to all the hype.

The first thing that strikes you in this is the total lack of rhythm. No movie on earth will make you laugh if you have time to fall asleep between scenes. The acting of Nicholson is the equivalent of a car going around with the brakes pulled. Anjelica Huston is absolutely tasteless, no flavor at all. Kathleen Turner is definitely a talented actress but she isn't passionate. She is cold. No pulse on her wrist. She even looks much older than her age. When she is together with Nicholson they seem people of the same age, yet Jack is 17 years older! The dialogs are long, very long and with never a wriggle. The story is potentially very interesting but the engine never gets started. The movie is unaccomplished. The only thing that made me laugh is the DC-8 aircraft. This movie got nominations and won an Oscar? You must be kidding!

John Huston was able to adapt this Richard Condon novel well to the screen. Many felt Prizzi's Honor was a dark comedy, but I saw it different enough drama and suspense is present to make this organized crime drama a classic winner. If you've read some of my other comments I guess you know what a big Jack Nicholson fan I am. And once again Jack delivers a bold performance in fact one of his best ever. Nicholson once again proves his preparation to be impeccable everything from the wardrobe and the strong Brooklyn accent that Jack displays makes him seem so realistic as the tough and direct to the point Mafia hitman (Charley Partanna). Nicholson's tough and bold performance is helped along with the great supporting cast of Kathleen Turner, and John Huston's daughter Anjelica. In fact Anjelica caught the eye of the industry as she received an Academy award for Best Supporting Actress. I couldn't agree more Anjelica's offbeat performance made her very deserving. William Hickey gives maybe behind Nicholson the strongest performance of the film as (Don Corrado Prizzi) the oldest crime figure of the Prizzi family and when the camera is in front of William he is magical his words and expressions just steal the show. Not only does Prizzi's Honor offer crime and drama but romance steals a good portion of the movie. From the beginning of the film when Nicholson discovers a beautiful blond stranger (Kathleen Turner). Instant chemistry between them-not unnaturally, perhaps, because she is secretly a hired gun for the Mafia. A love affair develops into passionate sex, then when the former fiancee of Charley Maerose Prizzi (Anjelica Huston) begins to wry her way to seduce Charley the twists continue. As the film progresses it shows just how organized greed corrupts all. In the end I felt that John Huston's most important message was to never fall in love and I agree with that message and have adopted it in many ways. That message is presented so perfect in the final scene when Irene Walker (Kathleen Turner) and Charley Partanna (Jack Nicholson) are together for the final time. No matter how much love it dies even if individuals have similar backgrounds. Believe me love hurts. Remember stand and support honor, pride, and most of all family take those things over hot passionate love because love can really hurt in big ways and Prizzi's Honor proves it. I must say this is a great movie to add to your home video collection and cherish for years, I know I have and I was once again pleased with Jack Nicholson hey aren't we always.

Jack plays a hit man. What a stretch. ********************SPOLILER ************************************ He falls for a woman (Kathleen Turner) who is also a contract killer. Now, here's where it gets funny, they each have a contact out on each other! The dialog is stale, predictable. Naturally, stereotypes abound about mobsters and their dirty deeds. Could have been a good film noir with a nice twist, but no one had the vision to see that. Jack is OK as a confused hit-man in love, Kathleen does what she is supposed to do - look pretty and breathless, nice supporting role from Angelica Huston. Perhaps back in 1985 the timing was right to spoof the Godfather films, but 25 years later, rather yawn-able.

The mafia-comedy hardly seems like a new idea in 2009, we've seen it done well ("The Sopranos"), done alright ("Married to the Mob" or "Analyze This") and done badly (any number of films, "The Godson" for example) and it practically seems quite an established film subject, even a cliché one at this point. However, to fully understand "Prizzi's Honor" if you've seen some of the latter day mafia-comedies that followed it, you have to understand that at one point it was a novel idea to make a movie where mafia dons and hit men were comedic fodder. If you approach "Prizzi's Honor" expecting it to pick up where its successors left off, you're bound to be disappointed and will likely find it slow and its jokes stale. It's important to remember that this was the first major production to take the subject matter of "The Godfather" (high-level mafia families) and satirize it. It therefore must have seemed quite clever and groundbreaking in 1985 to lampoon the bizarre behaviors and concepts of honor that "The Godfather" and all its imitators had presented to us as reality. You really can't hold "Prizzi's Honor" accountable because so many others realized there was a satirical goldmine here and exploited it until the mafia-comedy film was as cliché as the mafia film, so when approaching this movie, I tried to remember nothing like this had really been done before. Prizzi's Honor opens with a wedding scene, which is probably a nod to "The Godfather", but it is a very weak and plodding scene by any definition and especially in comparison to the masterpiece it emulates. From there it's mostly uphill though, as Nicholson's tremendous acting is just enough to suspend disbelief as his character, the son of a high ranking mafioso, has a wacky whirlwind romance with a dashing woman he meets at the wedding, only to discover she is mixed up in scamming his own mafia family and she's actually a hired killer just as he is, but that his love for her is so strong that her background doesn't matter. Dating the enemy becomes more and more of a tightrope walk and increasingly their genuine wedded bliss seems to be interrupted by their real world jobs, which would suggest they should see each other as a threat, and both of them typically deal with threats by homicide, leading to a quite funny problem that recurs throughout the film. The film is very quirky, since it's basically making up a new style of film there's a lot of imagination and the plot itself doesn't fall into any clichés. However, it does exploit a basketful of mafia movie clichés, from the over-the-top Brooklyn drawl that Nicholson somehow pulls off to the corpse-like appearance of the decrepit yet ruthlessly brilliant Don Corrado Prizzi. As most of its successors have just combined mafia clichés with a basic plot, "Prizzi's Honor" seems quite fresh with its complex plot and wonderfully offbeat characters. "Prizzi's Honor" seems to have fallen by the cinematic wayside, at least, it's not on too many short lists of great films, and its lackluster IMDb rating (6.8) rates it below or alongside many works it actually paved the way for. To some extent I think it suffers from the notion that very few good "serious" films emerged from America in the 80s aside from the stuff Woody Allen was doing. While to some extent this movie does seem to reflect some of the mid-80s film-making malaise, there is a lot of very clever work being done here, and this really is a movie worth remembering.

Who hated this movie. I took a date to see it because the CRITICS were raving about this movie as a brilliant "dark comedy". Raving is the correct word, because I feel the CRITICS must have been MAD. It certainly was "dark" but it was NO comedy. My date and I both agreed there was nothing funny about the movie. There were no characters we liked and the idea of a Man and Wife in bed with guns at the side of their beds ready to kill one another because it was their "job" was about as funny as going to the dentist. Yet to this date I still see people claiming it is a great movie. Talk about the EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES. I just don't get it. It is nice to know that I'm not the only person who felt he/she wasted their money on this over rated movie.