MONA LISA is a classic British film of the 1980s and a film with a great sense of place; one of those movies where you get to see the true London, not the sanitised, Hollywood version. From the high-class dwellings of Kensington to the grubby streets of Soho, here's the capital in all its glory - and there's even time for a road-trip to Brighton (with references to BRIGHTON ROCK) alongside!
Locations aside, this is a fine little film, one with a literate script and decent direction by Neil Jordan. Inevitably, the stand-out thing in the movie is the late, lamented Bob Hoskins, delivering a knock-out performance full of vitality and vigour. Hoskins plays a chauffeur who finds himself caught up in a dark and violent world of prostitution and gangsters.
MONA LISA is a film which subverts expectations and offers no happy endings. Instead, what we get is a gritty, slice-of-life drama, which at the same time offers up the requisite thrills and spills of the thriller genre (watch out for Clarke Peters as a truly nasty pimp). Alongside Hoskins, we get compelling turns from Cathy Tyson and the reliable Michael Caine in one of his bad guy turns, along with a young Robbie Coltrane, and some brief flashes of violence inspired by TAXI DRIVER. MONA LISA is film-making as it should be: a movie that shines a spotlight on human existence and tells a story about real people, warts and all.
