Prizzi’s Honour

Year: 1985
Production Co: ABC Motion Pictures
Director: John Huston
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Kathleen Turney, Anjelica Juston, Robert Loggia, John Randolph
Years before Mr and Mrs Smith came the original, much smoother version of hitman lovers.

Hitman Charlie (Nicholson) finds the woman of his dreams in Irene (Turner) at a wedding, and he's smitten. The two fall in love, but there are three problems. The first is that she's a hitman too. The second is that Charlie's just been ordered to whack her. The third is that she's just been given a contract to kill him.

Does he whack the girl he's waited his whole life for or live happily ever after? The one point of difference is this film is that it's essentially downbeat (perhaps thanks to noir godfather Huston), seeming to say that love will not deliver us and doesn't conquer all, and that we can't escape our destiny no matter how much we want to.

Nicholson is good but he just never quite fits as the romantic hero, as he is here and in a few others such as Wolf.
