SnoopyStyle John Sedley (Mickey Rourke) is derisively called Johnny Handsome for his disfigured face. During a jewel store robbery in New Orleans, he is double-crossed by fellow criminals Sunny Boyd (Ellen Barkin) and Rafe Garrett (Lance Henriksen). with his friend dead, he is sentenced to five years of hard time. Rafe tries to get him killed in prison but he still refuses to give Rafe up to police Lt. A.Z. Drones (Morgan Freeman). The newspaper falsely reports his death. Dr. Steven Fisher (Forest Whitaker) gives him an experimental surgery to fix his face and give him a new life. With his new face and new name Mitchell, he goes straight with a regular shipyard job and sweet girl Donna McCarty (Elizabeth McGovern) but revenge is always close to his mind.Before there was Face/Off, there was Johnny Handsome. I'm kidding. I'm not really comparing the two. The premise has its predecessors. This movie does need a better title. Johnny Handsome sounds silly. It should be closer to Pretty Boy Floyd. This movie is also an overlap between the two phases of Mickey Rourke's career. He's the troubled dark pretty leading man from his early days. He's also the malfigured worn down character from The Wrestler. As for the caper, I don't think Sunny would allow the money to leave her sight. There are a couple of questionable moves by some of the characters. It needs a bit of cleanup with the last act.

Spikeopath Johnny Handsome is directed by Walter Hill and adapted to screenplay by Ken Friedman from the novel "The Three Worlds of Johnny Handsome" written by John Godey. It stars Mickey Rourke, Ellen Barkin, Elizabeth McGovern, Lance Henriksen, Forest Whitaker, Morgan Freeman and Scott Wilson. Music is by Ry Cooder and cinematography by Matthew F. Leonetti.John Sedley (Rourke), AKA: Johnny Handsome, has a severely disfigured face, when he and his only real friend are double-crossed by two accomplices during a robbery, Johnny is sent to prison and his life reaches a new low. However, hope springs in the form of Dr. Steven Fisher (Whitaker), a pioneering plastic surgeon who offers to give Johnny surgery that would give him a normal face as he attempts to integrate back into society. With a new face making him unrecognisable, there is scope to enact revenge on the two people who killed his best friend and had him put in prison...Walter Hill knows his film noir, anyone who has seen The Driver knows this. Here for Johnny Handsome, Hill takes a lot of the fantastical elements of noir and dresses it up admirably as a violent revenge thriller. A box office flop and something of a kicking post for big hitting critics of the late 1980s, it's a film that now can be seen as being very much in tune with its influences.The charges of it being too bonkers, too violent and too much of a "B" movie homage just don't add up, because what is on offer is good solid meaty neo-noir cinema. A protagonist with an affliction, medical shenanigans, hyper femme fatale, over the top villain and a stoic and sarcastic gumshoe type copper. All of which operate in a sweaty and luridly coloured New Orleans. Add in Hill's eye for aggressive action sequences and it's neo a go-go.Hill gets strong performances from his cast, ensuring emotional bonds are not over egged and a clamour for sympathy and understanding kept to a bearable level by the actors playing the "good" guys "n" dolls. While giving Henriksen and Barkin licence to sizzle with sinister glee is astute and perfectly in tune with the material on the page. Leonetti's photography has the requisite pulpy noirishness to it, and the familiar twangs of Ry Cooder are never a bad thing in a Walter Hill movie.It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but those complaining about missed opportunities regarding rehabilitation - or that the liberal doctor turns out to be clinically wrong in his reform beliefs - really are missing the point or unaware of the world where something like Johnny Handsome lives. From the kinetic misery at film's start, to the "ever so in tune with film noir" finale, Johnny Handsome is well worth a look by anyone interested in noir's updated version. 7/10

Dan Ashley (DanLives1980) Many reviews to date regarding the 1989 film 'Johnny Handsome' claimed that the Walter Hill crime thriller was a slow moving, poorly aimed feature. Since I gave the film a chance I came to the conclusion that those critics probably watched the opening half hour before skipping off to the salon with their BFF's to get their back, crack and sack waxed and flap wrists over watercress soup and Madonna music videos. I'm guessing that was late '80's Hollywood anyway, I don't really want to know the specifics... I found it thoroughly enjoyable, 'Johnny Handsome', that was; very influential (inter-textual references made by great modern directors such as John Woo with the likes of 'Hard Target' have nodded in Handsome's direction) and in regard to issues still proving highly debatable today contained within the film, it remains far ahead of its time.'Johnny Handsome' is the story of the downtrodden and tragic John Sedley, played with humility and stark realism by Mickey Rourke. Left to fend for himself since the age of 13 after his prostitute mother died and having been born with a great genetic deformity that has rendered his face as badly deformed as that of the Elephant Man, he is a joke, he's unwanted, unloved and therefore has turned to crime to survive. He cannot talk properly due to the absence of a formal education and also as a result of a hare lip.Sedley is asked by his closest friend Mikey Chalmette, played humbly and earnestly by Scott Wilson, out of desperation to help him set up a heist in their hometown of New Orleans. Double-crossed and left for dead, Sedley is the victim of an attempted murder in prison, which sets him on the road to redemption when a doctor offers a trial of radical reconstructive surgery to cure his genetic deformity as he enters the witness protection program. But smiling darkly on the edge of every scene is Police Lieutenant A.Z. Drones, played softly yet sinisterly by a fresh-faced Morgan Freeman, a man who continually claims that the seemingly fragile and long-damaged Sedley is a born criminal who will offend again, regardless of the efforts of his redeemers to help him become a part of the civilised world.So when Sedley undergoes his miraculous transformation, is given a voice to speak with and learns to exercise his past demons, he takes an honest job. But with Drones on his back like the ghost of his conscience, it isn't long before he is contemplating using his new identity to draw the double-crossing heist partners who put him in prison and now believe he is dead into a revenge plot, playing them off against each other in the process.Johnny Handsome boasts one of the finest lists of actors dedicated to what is essentially a small scale but very well written crime drama. It plays off a single strand narrative but allows all its key characters to play openly and occasionally run riot as they tend to in all Walter Hill films. Everyone has a story and if not, they come with clever pieces of worldly wisdom seldom found in movie characters. Morgan Freeman for one being world renowned for playing such characters.But also with a supporting cast including Forest Whittaker, Lance Henriksen and Ellen Barkin, you're treated to the finest drama you could expect from an '80's crime thriller, that particular decade not exactly known for its drama over absent minded action films and comedies.New Orleans itself plays a fine character in the film, breathing colour into its scenes. From the docks, the narrow streets and the colourful nightclubs of the French Quarter and the unmistakeably distinctive graveyards right down to the architecture within the apartments and houses, the city gives this film an undeniable sense of place that few others could have provided. This is also a regular feature of Hill's older films such as The Driver, The Warriors, 48 Hours and Southern Comfort. Hill is as much an artist painting a picture as he is a director of unique acting talent.But Sedley's affliction is the main theme of the film, something that not only draws out the worst in the worst people but often the worst of the best. It's difficult to tell whether Lt. A.Z. Drones is either a good man or a villain because he believes that Sedley's new face is just a mask hiding the ugly truth of who he used to be and who he will always be deep down. Throughout the film and towards the end, Sedley comes to believe that this is true and that he might actually be redeemed simply by coming to accept it but much of the story is about the conflicting emotions of a man being torn in both directions by good and bad influences, weakened by a lifetime of torment and neglect. In many respects, it's a moral tale, which is surprising but in a good way.Maybe 'Johnny Handsome' was too honest, thoughtful and too unconventionally cool for critics expecting yet another Walter Hill all-male shoot em up after he gave the world 'Extreme Prejudice' and 'Red Heat' but maybe it was Hill's decision to wear his grizzled heart on his sleeve, to allow his main character to fall in love and to want forgiveness, that let down his 98% male audience. After all, he hasn't made such a statement since, yet 'Johnny Handsome' is possibly the most mature piece of work in Hill's back catalogue and although it didn't work so well in 1989, I feel it's more relevant now than it may ever be, in a vain world obsessed with looks yet one that is set off balance by a sympathetic minority that understands the ugliness of this world represents the reality so frequently avoided!

Michael Neumann One of the last of the red-blooded action directors shoots himself in the foot with this loud, lame-brained fable about a horribly disfigured criminal transformed by reconstructive surgery into Mickey Roarke (the younger, pre-pugilistic leading man Roarke). All the psychological implications of his metamorphosis from beast to beauty are abandoned in the recovery room, leaving several excellent actors stranded in a common, smash-and-grab shoot-'em-up riddled with stock characters and routine doses of sadism. Rehabilitation isn't even an option; Hill doesn't waste any time introducing the action, and likewise can't be bothered with such things as logic or coherence. The performances by Roarke and 'good' girlfriend Elizabeth McGovern are the only two redeeming virtues in an otherwise unpleasant movie, slapped together from a hodgepodge of tough guys, tough gals, tough talk, and lots of sloppy, predictable violence.