Johnny Handsome (2010)

This moody drama piece is for the most part very good. Mickey Rourke is excellent in the title role; a disfigured criminal who gets a shot at redemption but ultimately chooses revenge.

Well directed by Walter Hill with a good music score by Ry Cooder. All the cast do a good job, the story is tight and fast paced and some good action sequences to boot.

Pity about the DVD, it's fullscreen and this deserves to be in glorious widescreen.

I have this movie on VHS so I can't comment on the quality of the DVD as others have. As far as the movie goes, it is somewhat gut wrenching. Mickey Rourke plays the part of John Sedley (Johnny Handsome), a horribly disfigured man due to a birth defect. He isn't stupid, although a life of crime is about all he's known, but he isn't difficult to identify. He has a good friend named Mikey (Scott Wilson) who is hurting for money and persuades Johnny to do a jewelry store holdup. Johnny plans it well but two of their accomplises (Lance Henriksen and Ellen Barkin) want it all for themselves. They kill the driver and Mikey and almost get Johnny too. Johnny ends up behind bars while Raff (Henriksen) and Sunny (Barkin) buy Mikey's old establishment and are living fairly well with the proceeds from the robbery. They try to get Johnny murdered while in prison but the attempt fails. Johnny wakes up in a hospital and sees Forrest Whitaker, a plastic surgeon who wants to give Johnny a new face and a new life and does. He gets Johnny a decent job and Johnny meets and falls in love with a woman (Elizabeth McGovern) he meets there. Johnny's parole officer (Morgan Freeman) is constantly keeping tabs on him because he knows what Johnny is going to try to do: exact revenge on the two people responsible for Mikey's death. They won't recognize him now, his looks and speech don't give him away. Donna (McGovern) is in love with Johnny, he tells her about his past. She tries to persuade him to leave the past behind but Johnny can't. He could never live with knowing that the two people who killed his best friend got away with it.

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I remember seeing this film during it's initial run at a decrepit old movie palace in the Bronx with probably a handful of people in the audience. It's a shame because this unheralded gem deserved better. Before Quentin Tarantino there was Walter Hill as a purveyor of adrenaline charged pulp entertainment. Everything here clicks on all cylinders. Hill masterfully directs this intricately plotted story of a disfigured man given a second chance in life torn between going straight and settling down with a nice girl or returning to crime and getting revenge on his accomplices who set him up. New Orleans is a perfect locale with it's ominous steamy seediness. Mickey Rourke gives probably the performance of his career in capturing the poignance and ultimately the tragedy that is John Sedley. Not to be overlooked is Morgan Freeman as the cop who is tailing Johnny. Our first impulse is to loathe this character but, alas, it is he who truly knows Johnny. Lance Henriksen and Ellen Barkin are positively reptilian in their evil. Also effective are Forest Whitaker and Elizabeth McGovern as Johnny's surgeon and girlfriend who are hopeful that he can reform.

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Although Rourke has largely disappeared from credible film efforts of late, there was a time when this actor displayed unique talent and REAL charisma. Walter Hill caught one such performance in "Johnny Handsome", a revenge movie about a facially disfigured felon bent on avenging a double cross during a coin heist.

Rourke's character is arrested and eventually imprisoned for his role in the heist, while the double-crossers (portrayed with hyena-like gusto by Lance Henriksen and Ellen Barkin) skip off with the loot. Rourke's character barely survives an attempt made on his life in prison (engineered by Henriksen) that lands him in an intensive care ward. Here he meets with a crusading liberal doctor (nicely portrayed by Forest Whitaker)who arranges for surgery to repair the severe facial deformity. Whitaker's character believes wholeheartedly that the deformity has forced Rourke's character into a life of crime, and their interaction provides for some altruistic moments in this dark tale. Rourke is eventually paroled under the watchful, sarcastic, and unsympathetic eye of Lt. Drones (another good performance by Morgan Freeman)and gets set on a collision course for some payback.

Rourke's performance here (with the exception of his Bukowski inspired turn in "Barfly" and perhaps his performance in "A Prayer for the Dying") represents the best work he has ever done. One of the most compelling scenes in this movie is achieved by Rourke in silence, as he stares into a mirror, marvels over, and then silently displays incredible gratitude for the results of months of reconstrutive surgery; a stand-out moment in this film.

Although I have heard some comparisons of this movie in terms of structure to Shakespearean works and Greek Tragedy, I think it's safer to say "Handsome" is just a great revenge flick. Propelled by a great score (by none other than Ry Cooder)and some good performances by the supporting cast, this movie is a good look at Rourke's abilities as an actor. For that reason alone, the viewer is forced to consider an even more heart wrenching tragedy: What Mickey Rourke did to his career in the years since. . .

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One of Director Walter (48 Hrs, The Warriors, Hard Times) Hill's very best films. A moody, somber revenge films that recalls the film noirs of the 40's. Great cast led by Rourke as the disfigured ironically named "cheap crook" of the title. A crook who is wronged and uses a controversial facial surgery to seek revenge against the scumbags that killed Johnny's friend, framed him and tried to kill him twice.

I'm glad this finally came to blu-ray in a pristine condition 1080 p widescreen with some ok bonus features (the features are fine but they do not include Hill or any of the main cast). I just wanted the movie. Hopefully someday Lion's Gate or whoever puts out Walter Hill's "Extreme Prejudice" properly. Both this and that were only available in crappy cropped versions.

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