Prizzi's Honor

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.

I am not a huge fan of gangster movies even tho there are some masterpieces of the genre. And this was the main reason why I wanted to try this movie. However I didn't loved it but I found it just ok.

Charlie Partanna (Jack Nicholson) is a professional hitman that works for a Mafia clan led by Don Corrado Prizzi. One day he goes at a wedding and becomes infatuated with a gorgeous woman named Irene Walker (Kathleen Turner). They arrange a meeting and fall in love. After a while he finds out that she, too, is an hitwoman. And of course there is also the mob that orders them to kill each other when they have separate meetings. How it will unfold? Well, see the movie.

PRIZZI'S HONOR looks very good and it has a very good cast (Nicholson, Turner, Anjelica Huston in an Academy Award winning performance, Robert Loggia and William Hickey) and it also was a box-office hit back in 1985. However despite this I didn't found it that interesting and probably for two major reasons: 1) It could have been funnier (2) It's just not that full of action scenes as a gangster movie should be. Now I am not saying I hated the movie, but I found the plot very complicated and for me it was hard caring at all about these murderers. Not a must see despite being directed by John Huston, but just a time passer.

So many films glorify the mafia, even those like 'Goodfellas' which pull no punches still allow a residue of glamour to stick to their portrayal of the wise-guy life. So 'Prizzi's Honor', which ridicules its protagonists and shows them to be anything but wise, is a welcome sort of mafia film. Unfortunately, although it's reasonably entertaining, the film ultimately doesn't wholly succeed in any respect; too daft to work as black comedy, too slow to work as riotous farce, to humorously conceived to work as tragic drama. Jack Nicholson is good as the dumb hit man Charley, but the plot leaves us unsure whether we should laugh at him or cry with him, and in the end I felt inclined to do neither. Personally, I prefer Jim Jarmusch's 'Ghost Dog', another offbeat look at organised crime.

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.

"Prizzi's Honor" is one of those strange charmers that thrives on dark comedy and whacked situations. Mafia hit-man Jack Nicholson (Oscar-nominated) meets the super-erotic Kathleen Turner at a wedding and of course ends up dumping girlfriend Anjelica Huston (in a well-deserved Oscar-winning turn). The fact that Huston is the daughter of one of Nicholson's associates only makes the plot thicken. What Nicholson does not know is that Turner is really an assassin herself. Will he find out that his lover by night is really a hit-woman by day? And will he learn in time that the two have actually been hired to kill each other? Also along for the ride are scene-stealers Robert Loggia and William Hickey (who received an Oscar nod as the family's don). "Prizzi's Honor" was the final venture for legendary director John Huston (who was near death when he was Oscar-nominated for this). That little tidbit does not change the fact that "Prizzi's Honor" is really a strange experience that does not completely succeed. It is a movie that serves its purpose, but the ending does not justify the means used to get there. The Oscar-nominated screenplay makes itself out to be much more intelligent than it really is and ultimately Nicholson and Turner have to carry the production. Still a good movie, but over-rated and even a bit disappointing when all is said and done. 4 stars out of 5.