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The Worst Film Ever

Fantastic!

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Gritty and well-done, if somewhat overrated at the time of its release. The performances are explosive (the best moments of all three leads are their violent outbursts - there is a lot of bottled-up anger and frustration in this movie - and Bob Hoskins deserved his Oscar nomination), but the script is kind of monotonous. **1/2 out of 4.

What kicks off MONA LISA is the unlikely relationship between ex-con chauffeur (Bob Hoskins) and high-end call girl (Cathy Tyson). The two couldn't be more at odds, but there's an incremental softening, with Hoskins slowly becoming taken with her sophistication. But the film's terrific noir story finds our small-time crook plunging himself into the murky waters of the London underworld as he tries to unravel a mystery. And in true hard-boiled fashion, he's had enough of being jerked around as events turn ever more downbeat. There's a glimmer of hope in the closing moments of MONA LISA that happens just when you think things can't get any bleaker. It's not at all what one would expect, but for once, there's finally a note that's upbeat.Wonderful movie; engrossing while it plays, and hard to shake when it's done. The story is luridly captivating even when the seedy scenery isn't. And there's a nice break for a music video (Genesis' In Too Deep) that lays on the mood in the grand Miami Vice tradition. And the performances from Hoskins, Tyson and Michael Caine (who commands the screen during his scenes) are remarkable. But it's Hoskins who makes this movie his own as a character who's usually clueless, with an innocence masked by gritty toughness. We share his heartbreak when he's denied that which keeps him going, and the film's emotional center is embodied by him. He really does an amazing job here. 8/10

MONA LISA is a classic British film of the 1980s and a film with a great sense of place; one of those movies where you get to see the true London, not the sanitised, Hollywood version. From the high-class dwellings of Kensington to the grubby streets of Soho, here's the capital in all its glory - and there's even time for a road-trip to Brighton (with references to BRIGHTON ROCK) alongside! Locations aside, this is a fine little film, one with a literate script and decent direction by Neil Jordan. Inevitably, the stand-out thing in the movie is the late, lamented Bob Hoskins, delivering a knock-out performance full of vitality and vigour. Hoskins plays a chauffeur who finds himself caught up in a dark and violent world of prostitution and gangsters.MONA LISA is a film which subverts expectations and offers no happy endings. Instead, what we get is a gritty, slice-of-life drama, which at the same time offers up the requisite thrills and spills of the thriller genre (watch out for Clarke Peters as a truly nasty pimp). Alongside Hoskins, we get compelling turns from Cathy Tyson and the reliable Michael Caine in one of his bad guy turns, along with a young Robbie Coltrane, and some brief flashes of violence inspired by TAXI DRIVER. MONA LISA is film-making as it should be: a movie that shines a spotlight on human existence and tells a story about real people, warts and all.

Viewers not conditioned to the rich Cockney slang will miss some of the flavor of this tense and emotional English drama, starring Bob Hoskins as a small time ex-con (with a heart of only slightly tarnished gold) hired to chaperone an elegant call girl through a midnight netherworld of London vice and corruption. The setting recalls some of the nightmare urban landscapes of Martin Scorsese, but the film resists any easy comparison by adding an element of compassion to the unsettling background of violence and pornography. The plot itself, concerning the search by a reluctant Hoskins and his companion for another missing girl, is more mystery than thriller, but not the parlor room whodunit of classic British mystery. This is a more complex mystery of human emotions, set amidst the wreckage of sexual exploitation. The only miscalculation is the sappy ballad (performed by pop rockers Phil Collins and Genesis) included strictly as a cosmetic filler and soundtrack album highlight.