Mona Lisa (1985)

Average rating

(66%)

Starring:	Bob Hoskins \| Cathy Tyson \| Robbie Coltrane \| Michael Caine
Director:	Neil Jordan
Studio:	STARZ HOME ENTERTAINMENT
Run time:	100 mins
Genres:	Drama
Languages:	English
Hearing-impaired:	English
Released:	February 25, 2002
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In Neil Jordan's MONA LISA, ex-con George (Bob Hoskins), expecting to be repaid after taking a fall for his crime boss, is reduced to driving classy call girl Simone (Cathy Tyson) to her jobs at London's finer hotels. Despite their differences--he's a poorly-educated, unattractive, and unsophisticated bigot; she's a beautiful, elegant, and intelligent black woman--George falls in love with her and agrees to help locate one of her old friends, a junkie still working the streets for a dangerously violent pimp.

Rating of 2 stars out of 5

Coming between Is Paris Burning? and The Young Girls of Rochefort, this was the second of three films that George Chakiris made in France in the mid-1960s. Easily the least of the trio, it's a humdrum period caper movie that has none of the ingenuity or intensity of Rififi and even less of the bravura that made the gallery sequences in the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair so entertaining. However, it does have the advantage of being based on a true story, as Leonardo's masterpiece was lifted from the Louvre in 1911 and not returned for two years.

Rating of 2 stars out of 5
Halliwell's Film Guide

Only this actor could make a hit of this unsavoury yarn, with its highlights of sex and violence. But he did.