L'onore dei Prizzi

I loved this film when I saw it in 1985. To see it again after seeing film and series like the Godfather, The Soprans etc is a treat. It is a lovely film, elegant,well-played with a with lots of humor. Jack Nicholson pays the not very intelligent Charley Partanna with flair and a lot of humour. Kathleen Turner is beautiful as ever. The rest of cast is also very good. John Rudolph playing his charing but very dangerous father, Angelica Huston is magnificent as the deserted MaeRose who wants to revenge Cahrly but still loves him. The music is very much a part of this intelligent film. It is a joy to listen to how it comments or highlights what happens in the film.

It is a loving parody of the mafia genre. A must-see for any one who likes this genre and for film lovers everywhere.

When a whole lot of his contemporaries were dead or in retirement, John Huston was still making some very good movies and even winning Oscars for family members. Prizzi's Honor was kind of a coda to his career having directing his father Walter for Best Supporting Actor for The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre in 1948, in 1945 daughter Anjelica Huston wins for Best Supporting Actress in Prizzi's Honor. That's a feat that will really be hard for any director to duplicate.

The Prizzis are your Eighties version of the Corleones, a Mafia family headquartered in Brooklyn with far reaching interests including Las Vegas like the Corleones. Jack Nicholson is Charlie Partanna, not the most polished knife in the drawer, but one of the sharpest. Mafia families inbreed more than royalty or hillbillies and Charlie's expected to marry Maerose Prizzi who is played by Anjelica Huston, the ultimate Mafia princess. He's practically been raised to be her prince consort.

But one look at the beautiful and sophisticated Kathleen Turner and Nicholson's hormones are at light-speed overdrive. But Kathleen's got a secret or two as well. She was in on a scam that took $720.000.00 from the Prizzis in Las Vegas. And in a real bow to women's liberation, something indeed from a tradition bound organization like the Mafia, she's also a hit woman with a contract on Nicholson.

Some 20 years before those marrieds Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were trying to bed and kill each other simultaneously in Mr.&Mrs. Smith, Nicholson and Turner were going at it, tongue and gun. John Huston after 30 years finally repeated a black comedy, a much better black comedy than Beat The Devil.

Besides Anjelica's win, Prizzi's Honor was up for several more Oscars in 1985 including Best Picture, Best Actor for Jack Nicholson, Best Supporting Actor for William Hickey, Best Director for John Huston and others. Prizzi's Honor is the kind of film where the jokes sneak up on you, don't expect belly laughs, but minutes after something is said, the line will kick in.

And Prizzi's Honor was a great film to have to your credit in the twilight of your career for John Huston.

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.

This film has fallen from my 1980's assessment of "brilliant" down to "really very good". Why the slight slope off? Mostly because I think it positions itself as a comedy, but it's not particularly funny. What it is is devilishly clever, with an amazingly black heart. I'm not surprised that it's adapted from a novel by Richard Condon because it's funny kind of in the same manner as "The Manchurian Candidate" (which might even be funnier).

It's best not to even tackle the plot because even this poster feels like a spoiler to me. All of the accolades back in the 80's seemed to go to Anjelica Huston and William Hickey, partly because I think they were kind of new discoveries and turn in great, really eccentric and mannered performances. I think Nicholson and Turner deserve more praise than they got. Nicholson's rare performance as a really dumb man is wonderful, and Turner pulls off a really sunny performance as a really bleak and duplicitous character.

Once I had a little context, I enjoyed it.

It's not your typical mob movie. And maybe not typical anything else.

Comes from an author who writes satirical books about abuse of power. Known for The Manchurian Candidate. And this.

So this is a satirical mob movie. But the satire is watered down some in the movie compared to the book, apparently.

Watching it with that lens, knowing some of it is kind of a subtle/wry/dark humor, sort of making fun of the mob with these over the top characters and plot lines... It actually becomes quite funny. And fun.

And Jack Nicholson's character is well done I think. As well as his main love interest.

So if you can handle all of that...

8/10.