Mona Lisa (1986)

looked good but I needed subtitles

I tried to watch this film twice. I gave up early the first time because I couldn't understand a lot of the dialogue. The Cockney accents did me in. Most of the time the girl spoke is a very low voice and I missed most of what she said.

However it looked so good that I tried again the next evening and got through almost half of it. I could tell that the acting was first rate and I wanted to stick it out. When George, the hero went to sleeze joints and houses of prostitution to find Cathy for his friend, I found it too hard to take. I just wasn't in the mood to see 15 year old girls with bruises on their faces turning tricks for slimy pimps. Too depressing.

Perhaps if I could have understood more of the dialogue I would have made it through that rough spot. Reading the reviews here makes me want to have seen it. I'm not really reviewing the film here. I just wanted to warn others who may have a similar hard time with English films.

I really do wish that English made films supplied subtitles for our American ears. August 18, 2008

A Bob Hoskins must see

This was my first exposure to Bob Hoskins- and I've been a fan ever since!And it was quite a change to see Michael Caine as a truly nasty guy! Acting is superb, and plot is refreshing. Music was very good too. March 8, 2007

So What's A Feller to Do?

Upon its 1986 release, "Mona Lisa" was proclaimed a masterpiece of the British crime film drama; it brought the Irish-born Neil Jordan, who'd both written and directed it, to the forefront of working British film directors. Reminded everyone of Nat King Cole's great song. Won its star Bob Hoskins an Academy Award nomination, as well as the Cannes Film Festival and British Academy Awards. It's since been recognized as one of the big three of British noir crime dramas: Michael Caine made "Get Carter," Hoskins made "The Long Good Friday;" together, they made "Mona Lisa."

The movie has frequently been compared to Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver," for many reasons. Hoskins stars as George, typical, low-wattage East End thug, just getting out of jail after doing seven years for crime boss Mortwell (Caine). George thinks he's owed; Caine gives him a job chauffeuring high priced hooker Simone (Cathy Tyson). Hoskins is expert, as ever, in conveying the controlled violence in George's soul; he also conveys as well as possible the character's surprising naivete. Caine is the cool, even-tempered, joking, fierce villain we saw in "Get Carter;" there's a ten-second bit where he allows Mortwell's mask to slip; we see him with bared teeth, closing in for the kill. Tyson, on her way to a television career, does a good job as Simone, with her own problems. The young Sammi Davis, best known for "Hope and Glory,' stands out as an exploited young drug-addicted prostitute. And the economy-sized Scots comic Robbie Coltrane, before his television success as "Cracker," seems wasted in a pointless subplot, as George's best friend.

Still, to me, the most apt comparison to this movie is actually the movie of John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men." We have Coltrane, as Hoskin's friend, often asking him to "Tell me a story, George." That's a direct quote from Lenny (Lon Chaney Jr.)'s frequent request to his George, Burgess Meredith. And we have cockney George buying a rabbit for Mortwell, we're never told why, but Lenny had a pet rabbit in "Of Mice and Men." However, on a first viewing after several years, what was most striking to me about this film was how mannered the script is, how careful to alternate dramatic highs and lows. And how unlikely it is that Hoskins' character could be quite so naive, after an adult life spent the shady side of the law, and a seven-year jail stint.

The seamy London underworld of homelessness, drugs, and kinky sex is well-captured in this movie; the powerful photography gives us the feel of some of the city's meanest inhabitants and streets.

Otherwise, this movie builds upon another of Jordan's signature themes: the love of a man for an inappropriate woman. George is evidently greatly mistaken in believing that a character as damaged as Simone can be talked into a future of love, marriage, and a baby carriage. The same theme pops immediately to mind in at least the eight other feature films, that Jordan wrote, and/or directed, that I've seen. Many viewers will be familiar with the recent "Breakfast on Pluto." Liam Neeson, an Irish parish priest, fathers a child upon his housekeeper, whom he actually loves. In "The End of the Affair," Ralph Fiennes tries to continue seeing Julianne Moore, but she's sworn off him, in a prayer to God to save his life during the London blitz. In "Interview with the Vampire," the seven-year old vampire played by Kirsten Dunst, will never, in all eternity, be mature enough for Tom Cruise's undead character. In "The Crying Game,"well, the transvestite Dil will never be the woman Fergus thought she was. Then there's "The Good Thief:" Nick Nolte's old enough to be a grandfather to that movie's teenage prostitute. In "We're No Angels," Robert De Niro, masquerading as a priest, is flummoxed by Demi Moore's Molly. And "The Miracle," an adopted Irish teenager unknowingly falls in love with his biological, and fully-aware, mother. And then there's "High Spirits," Peter O'Toole at his least disciplined, a silly little haunted castle movie. Poor Steve Guttenberg finds himself in love with a ghost in that one. So what's a feller to do? February 19, 2007

Newman's an Icon, but Hoskins Should Have Won

Well, the Hollywood gossip is that Paul Newman won the Academy Award for best actor that year not really for his performance in "The Color of Money" but for all the other great performances he was nominated for but didn't win. Eg. "Cool Hand Luke", "Hud" etc. "Color" was, at best, a mediocre film with an okay performance by the cast and no one seriously believes it was in the same category as "Mona Lisa."

I can't add much to what others have already pointed out. How does an actor portray a not too bright, tough, small time hood who has a big heart? It could not have been an easy thing to do, but Hoskins did it brilliantly. From the beginning of the film where he walks across the bridge to the hopeful conclusion when he walks down the road with his daughter and his best friend, you believe and root for this character. He is small time and likely to remain so. But he is by no means a loser. And with that optimistic closing, perhaps Neil Jordan wanted the audience to know that George's daughter would be saved, by his love and his genuine decency, from the same horrid, sleazy fate as Simone or Kathy. It brought tears to my eyes, anyway.

A word about Michael Caine. He is, as usual, terrific. I said in another review that he can play just about anything. (Walter Matthau was one of the few other movie stars to share this ability.) Evil and despicable ("Mona Lisa"), clumsy and romantic ("Hannah and her Sisters"), ruthless ("Get Carter"), funny and rascally ("The Man Who Would be King") and, of course, cool ("The Ipcress File"). I think he once said in an interview that he told Bob Hoskins that the two of them appeared in the three greatest British crime films ever made. He in "Get Carter", Hoskins in "The Long Good Friday" and the both of them in "Mona Lisa."

"Mona Lisa" is bleak and at times tough to watch, but it's one of the best films of the eighties. Five stars. December 21, 2006

Dreams Just Lie There, and They Die There

It's a stretch to link the lyrics of Nat King Cole's recording with this movie and its title. Almost any ballad would have served. But it's no stretch at all to see why "Mona Lisa" became a sleeper hit, launched the career of writer-director Neil Jordan, and won Bob Hoskins an Oscar nomination. He plays an ill-tempered ex-con hired to chauffeur a call girl (Cathy Tyson) around to clients. That he will fall for her is a given; so are the tricks that screenwriter Jordan will play on them.

Hoskins and Tyson tool around London, tend to business, and bond. He is open and inquisitive, she is closed and secretive. What binds them is survival. Rarely has urban low-life been filmed as matter-of-factly as here. Sex for sale is the street currency and those who earn it are injured in ways unseen on their faces. The camera visits sordid sites never listed on tourist maps. Nevertheless, Jordan finds tenderness there, unlikely as it may be, just as John Huston found it aboard "The African Queen."

The movie takes a minute to pull you in and, unfortunately, more than that to keep you there, so difficult are the cockney accents. This DVD lists English subtitles on the case which are nowhere to be found on the menu; nor are any of the easy-to-obtain extras we expect from The Criterion Collection, although there is a Jordan-Hoskins commentary. But "Mona Lisa" is so strongly written, acted and directed that it doesn't need any enhancements to engage us while we are watching it.


June 27, 2005

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