Customer Reviews

Johnny Handsome [VHS]

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

I really liked this movie, so i bought it the moment it came out on DVD. But i have to say what a poor job did they do at Artisan. Full Screen transfer and blurry picture. I should say that they used a VHS tape as master for the dvd, what a mistake to make. So i give two stars because of the movie not because of the dvd release.
If you want to buy this picture on DVD, buy the region 2 version of Momentum. This edition is Widescreen Anamorphic and has really good picture quality.

How can you beat this cast? Mickey Rourke, Morgan Freeman, Ellen Barkin, Forrest Whitaker, Elizabeth Montgomery, Lance Henriksen; and since it's a B movie, they all get these great, cheesy lines, and since it's set in Louisiana, they get to use that hilarious Creole-chef, swamp-talkin' accent. I'm a sucker for movies where you get to root for the likeable bad guy, even though you know he'll die in a hail of bullets. Johnny Handsome isn't camp, but it's close. A must-have for Mickey Rourke fans.

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.

The films that Mickey Rourke made in the 1980s make me cry because he was such a great artist! He cared so much about the characters he portrayed that you forgot it was a movie and were convinced they were real. Johnny Handsome was the last of his great roles. After this film, Rourke just went through the motions of earning a paycheck. But, good Lord, what an amazing film Johnny Handsome was! I saw Johnyy Handsome last weekend back-to-back with Angel Heart, Barfly, 9 1/2 Weeks, and Year of the Dragon and actually shed tears. Why did I weep? Anyone who knows great acting knows that Rourke, since then, has put his talent on strike and done drek like Point Blank and Double Impact. Most actors nowadays are awful. Only Sean Penn, Daniel Day Lewis, Nicholas Cage, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, and Jessica Lange give performances that touch my soul. Rourke was one of the best. What happened? Was it the Marlon Brando Syndrome? At least in Johnny Handsome, we know what brilliance we had once, way back when. In a world where posing nude or engaging in a scandal give one enough credentials to earn a SAG card, it is refreshing to know that, at least with one actor 10 years ago, genuine exposure came from the soul.

I don't know how many times I've seen this film but each time I watch it Mickey Rourke just gets better. He can out act everyone else on the screen with him with the possible exception of Scott Wilson who plays his friend. Rourke has been a favorite of mine since I saw him in Body Heat and Diner and I have followed his career ups and downs with fasination. Why do I like this film, I used to work at a center for handicapped people and we have a young man who had a similar disfigurement to Rourke's in the movie. He loved movies so I took him often to see his favorites and he loved this movie because Rourke becomes in his words "beautiful." My friend died recently and I miss him and when I see this film I think that MR caught the essence of what it is to be lonley, disfigured and mad at the people who betrayed him. Often I have dreamed of Rourke in this film and I don't quite know what to make of this? But it remains one of my all time favorite Mickey Rourke movies.

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. . .

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.

Ahh, here we go, capitalizing on Mickey Rourke's "comeback" via "The Wrestler," with the first of (probably) several old Rourke films. I loved this film when I saw it in theaters, bought a copy of the Laser Disc (which is in the correct widescreen ratio), and was looking forward to upgrading to DVD when this title was released several years ago by, I think, Artisan. Finding out it was full screen, I passed. I was hoping for a DVD upgrade to widescreen, but to no avail.

Anyway, directed by Walter Hill with his usual action-packed style, and acted superbly by Rourke, Lance Henrikson and Ellen Barker, this is a great movie that demands to be seen in its widescreen glory. Come on, guys, let's get it right this time around!