Prizzi’s Honor

There is a scene in Prizzi’s Honor where a woman throws a baby at a mafia bodyguard during a kidnapping. 

The “baby” is a doll but the bodyguard doesn’t know that and he knocks the flying infant away and pulls his gun. 

After the kidnapping is over (more or less) the two kidnappers discuss what just happened and we get this exchange. 

Irene Walker: I can’t get over it. What kinda creep wouldn’t catch a baby? If it was real it coulda been crippled for life.

Charley Partanna: He wasn’t paid to bodyguard the baby.

Partanna, is Jack Nicholson and Walker is Kathleen Turner and they are both funny and interesting in Prizzi’s Honor. 

Although I may have just given you the best line in the movie I have not given away the best scene. 

Until we got to the baby doll kidnapping I was iffy on this whole enterprise. I’m no fan of mafia comedies as I like my mobsters serious and not screwball. The only obvious example is The Sopranos which was both deadly serious and one of the best comedies on television for its entire run. 

But please save me from all the times DeNiro or Matthew Broderick or whoever decide to make me an offer of laughter. 

Watching this I was reminded that Goodfellas and My Blue Heaven are about the same gangster, Henry Hill. 

The Marty Scorsese picture (serious and funny) is a classic and the Herbert Ross, Nora Ephron screwball comedy (funny but not serious) is mostly forgotten. 

Prizzi is written by Richard Condon and Janet Roach and based on Condon’s book series about the Prizzi crime family.

Legendary Director John Huston was at the helm but this is not the sort of movie that calls for either grand vistas or director tricks. 

One hit takes place in a garage and we hear the gunshots but never see the action. It’s just that kind of movie. 

It’s a movie that is very concerned about turns in the plot and how the characters react and think through their various predicaments. 

At one particular plot point I thought, “I love it when a movie turns the screws.” 

And that’s the long and short of it. Do you go to movies for amazing visuals? Or do you enjoy a good soapy plot? In this case, you won’t get both. 

I can’t believe Angelica Houston won an Academy Award for this for best supporting actress. She’s very good but she’s also barely in it. 

However, I was amused to see that the great William Hickey got a supporting actor nom for his work as the elderly don.

If you know Hickey at all you probably know him as the cigar smoking uncle in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Here he’s once again called on to play someone that is more corpse than man. 

He could be the head of a family of vampires as easily as the son of a crime family. 

But he’s so good here and so fun to watch as he becomes the living embodiment of ruthless cunning.

It took a bit for me to get past the Nicholson casting as I never imagine him as an Italian mobster. He doesn’t look right for that to me but sooner or later you either go with it or you don’t. 

He also is playing against type in another way as this mafioso is no deep thinker or planner in the way a Corleone might be. 

I think the direction Huston gave Nicholson ought to give you an answer on whether or not this flick is for you. 

Before every scene Huston apparently turned to Jack and said, “Remember, he’s stupid.”