Bob Hoskins was still near the front end of his career as an actor and Neil Jordan was making only his second feature film when they paired up with a very strong effort in Mona Lisa (1986). Throw in some great shots of the seedier side of London and the voice of Nat King Cole, and the result is a superb, if under-appreciated, combination thriller and character study.

Historical Background: Neil Jordan was born in Sligo, Ireland on February 25th, 1950. After studying history and English at University College in Dublin, he began writing novels and short stories. He worked as a consultant on John Boorman's Excalibar (1981) before turning to directing himself, beginning with a documentary about Excalibar. Jordan's first three feature films were all impressive: Angel (1982), The Company of Wolves (1984), and Mona Lisa (1986). Those films established Jordan as a top independent art house filmmaker. Jordan then accepted an invitation to Hollywood, but discovered that he was not nearly so adept working under the constraints imposed by big-name performers and massive budgets. Neither of his Hollywood endeavors, High Spirits (1988) and We're No Angels (1989), were well received. Returning to the U.K., Jordan immediately reasserted himself with his best-known film to date, The Crying Game (1992). Jordan has since directed Interview with the Vampire (1994), Michael Collins (1996), The Butcher Boy (1997), In Dreams (1999), The End of the Affair (1999), and The Good Thief (2003). Jordan currently has one film, Breakfast on Pluto (2005), in post-production and another, Me and My Monster, in production.

The Story: George (Bob Hoskins), a short, husky man, is fresh out of prison after a twelve year stint. He's so unaccustomed to freedom that he gives the impression of existing outside of time and space. Hoping to reconnect with his teenage daughter, George shows up at the door with flowers. She doesn't recognize him but her mother (Pauline Melville) sure does. After a shouting match, she slams the door in his face. George has to be restrained by an old friend, Thomas (Robbie Coltrane).

We never learn why George ended up in the slammer, except that it had to do with the local vice lord, Mortwell (Michael Caine). George seems to believe that Mortwell owes him something. He goes looking to collect and is given a job as a driver for a high-priced hooker, Simone (Cathy Tyson). She is tall, slender, black, and beautiful and caters to the sexual needs of bankers, middle-eastern diplomats, and other wealthy old men with kinky requirements. Initially, the pair is at loggerheads. George is coarse and uncouth. Simone is well dressed and sophisticated, even if she's just a prostitute. George feels simultaneously above her and beneath her. When George refers to Simone as a lady, Thomas reminds him, "I thought you said she was a tall tart." The naïve George resolves this logical conflict as best he can, replying, "She is, but she's also a lady." George dresses with so little taste that he stands out like a sore thumb in the hotel lobbies. Simone is embarrassed to be seen with him and gives him money to buy some new clothing. What he picks out for himself is still so cheap that she has to go shopping with him for a herringbone suit. Clothing is an important part of her job. The two bicker but gradually realize that they sort of like one another.

Simone worked her way up to call girl status, starting out as a streetwalker in Soho, working the sleaziest meat markets, such as the King's Cross district. There, she had been under the thumb of a sadistic pimp, Anderson (Clarke Peters), who periodically rearranged her face. She had managed to break free of Anderson, but, in so doing, had left behind a younger, blond hooker named Cathy (Kate Hardie) whom she had promised to protect. She desperately wants to save Cathy from Anderson but if she shows herself openly in the old haunts, she'll be subject to Anderson's reprisals. Simone asks George to try to find her friend. George finally agrees. George searches one seedy establishment after another, initially to no avail. When he finally locates Cathy, he has to cross both Mortwell and Anderson to extract Cathy from their clutches and the sordid activities she is forced to engage in at just fifteen-and-a-half. Obviously, things have to come to a head now, but I'll leave the rest for you to discover on your own.

Themes: Like another film I reviewed recently, The Go-Between, this film relates to the issue of being used. The commentary track on the Criterion DVD, featuring Neil Jordan and Bob Hoskins, makes crystal clear Jordan's intent. Apparently, I have an entirely different notion than does Jordan about what constitutes being "used" in an adverse sense. George chooses to help Simone locate her friend, Cathy, who is being exploited by a malicious "ponce" (pimp). Simone makes no quid pro quo promises to George, implicit or explicit, in relation to either love or sex. Saving Cathy is certainly a worthy enough cause in its own right. One of George's motivations for helping is his recognition that Cathy is about the same age as his own daughter. The other principal motivation is the hope that Simone might come to love him if he helps her out. When he later discovers that there is no possibility that Simone will reciprocate his romantic feelings, George feels "used" by Simone. Jordan clearly intends that viewers share George's view of the matter. I don't personally see it that way at all. George should be satisfied that he has helped a friend by helping one of her friends. He's entitled to hope that his charitable act might encourage feelings of love on Simone's part, but not entitled to expect it. Simone did nothing to misrepresent her feelings. Simone and George simply hadn't gotten to a stage in their relationship where there would have been reason to discuss issues that would have revealed the essential incompatibility of their respective desires. He naively let his hopes run too far ahead of reality.

In Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Darcy performs a service for his beloved Elizabeth that is similar to what George provides her for Simone: "rescuing" a friend (a sister, in the Austen novel) from a sleazy situation. Darcy went out of his way to try to keep his service secret from Elizabeth, not wanting her to feel obliged to him. That's as it should be. Performing a service for a friend, out of love or respect for the person, does not give you the right to expect something in return. The thematic viewpoint adopted by Jordan in his script for this film smacks of male chauvinism: if a man performs a service requested by a female that he's attracted to, he's entitled to expect her to "put out" for him, romantically and/or sexually. Otherwise, he's been used. That appears to be the gist of Jordan's misguided thematic argument.

Production Values: Not withstanding the thematic problem with the film, the script has several major strengths. The narrative starts out as a character-driven drama and gradually evolves into a tense thriller. The character study centers on George and encompasses both the film's title and its theme song. George is a truly fascinating character. On the one hand, he's a temperamental petty hoodlum who has spent a number of years in prison, but he's also naïve and innocent. He's a man with a moral conscience and a protective streak toward women, despite being employed by the local vice lord. George becomes increasingly obsessed with his "lady" and projects onto her the attributes of an ideal woman. She is just mysterious enough, like the Mona Lisa, to permit George to ignore the possibility that she'll be unattainable, for one reason or another. He falls in love, but it's with his own fantasy of her rather than the reality. No director does a better job than Jordan at dealing with nuances and complexities in his characters.

Later, as the story develops, George learns about the plight of Simone's best friend, Cathy. At this point, the film transitions into an urgent thriller, as George tries to extract Cathy from the wasteland in which she is mired. The thriller aspect reaches a respectable conclusion, but the emotional energy of the relationship between George and Simone is frittered away when a rather ordinary kind of difficulty is given vastly inflated importance. George naively believes that he can win Simone's love by being her knight errant.

On the commentary track, Hoskins opines that the film depicts London as seen through the eyes of an Irish poet – referring, of course, to Neil Jordan. There's plenty of local color in this film, but it's a far cry from the London Bridge or Buckingham Palace. This is the London of squalid alleys and underpasses where johns cruise through the human meat market. It's the Soho district of porn shops and peek-parlors. In a video store, George even finds a pornographic tape featuring Simone and is later stunned by what it depicts. Mona Lisa never smiled like that! This film presents as bleak and noir-ish a portrait of London as you're ever likely to see. The camera work is excellent and there's some nice use of symbols representing ideals of womanhood, such as a Mona Lisa print and statues of the Virgin Mary. The soundtrack featuring Nat King Cole captures exquisitely the essential mood of the film, especially when the legendary crooner belts out the title song, "Mona Lisa."

Bob Hoskins is absolutely riveting in this film, enough so that he won the Best Actor award from BAFTA, shared the one from the Cannes Film Festival, and was nominated for an Oscar. Hoskins has a lot of emotional depth, especially in the gangster kind of role. I liked his performance here even better than his extraordinary one in The Long Good Friday (1980). Hoskins has also appeared in Pink Floyd – The Wall (1982), The Cotton Club (1984), Brazil (1985), The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Hook (1991), Nixon (1995), Felicia's Journey (1999), Last Orders (2001), and Maid in Manhattan (2002). Jordan originally had Sean Connery in mind for the part but ultimately rewrote the entire script to fit Hoskins.

Cathy Tyson, who is the niece of actress Cecily Tyson, is excellent as well, providing just the right counterpoint to Hoskins, in her role as Simone. She's elegant and controlled and makes viewers marvel how anybody so intelligent and aware could be a hooker. Pretty good for a debut film role!

Michael Caine is excellent in a supporting role, though one cannot compare it meaningfully with the best work that he's done in larger roles. Caine appeared in such films as Zulu (1964), The Ipcress File (1965), Alfie (1966), The Italian Job (1969), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Educating Rita (1983), The Whistle Blower (1986), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Death Becomes Her (1992), The Cider House Rules (1999), and Austen Powers in Goldmember (2002). There's also a subtly comedic performance turned in by Robbie Coltrane. He's a familiar face from such films as Defence of the Realm (1985), GoldenEye (1995), The World Is Not Enough (1999), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001), and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002). Kate Hardie, who later appeared in Croupier (1999), is quite effective here as the badly abused teen hooker, Cathy.

Bottom-Line: The anamorphic widescreen transfer, at a ratio of 1.77:1, looks very good, with excellent brightness and medium strong colors. The sound is improved over the VHS monaural track. The commentary track is one of the best I've encountered, providing some lucid insight into the filmmaking process, rather than the breezy anecdotes that occupy so many such tracks. The original theatrical trailer is also provided. I'm amazed that this film has no previous reviews here at Epinions. The British Film Institute ranks it as the 67th best British film all-time, which I think is about right. The only thing that keeps me from rating this film five-stars is the flaccid, anticlimactic ending. Hoskins is brilliant and the script is superlative as a character study and as a thriller – until the big fizzle at the end.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age