Word: prizzi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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There, however, useful invention ends. The narrative Murphy develops out of this situation is less a homage to a vanished genre than a knock-off of two more recent successes -- The Sting and Prizzi's Honor -- that were funny, but in antithetical, unblendable ways. The movie veers uneasily from not-funny comedy to not-persuasive melodrama. Murphy forgets that the dialogue in old- fashioned crime pictures was as highly stylized as the settings. In place of sharply polished wisecracks, he gives us the steady mutter of the witless, unfelt obscenities that are the argot of our modern mean streets...
Citing Turner's versatility as one of her chief strengths, Dwyang noted that she has played roles as diverse as a love-struck novelist in "Romancing the Stone," a mafia assassin in "Prizzi's Honor," and a wholesome small-town teenager in "Peggy Sue Got Married...
...PRIZZI'S GLORY...
...lissena this. Richard Condon useta write very funny stuff, right up there with George V. Higgins, but lately there is too much stuff and not enough funny. Mainly, this third book of the Prizzi series, about the good-guy Mafia assassin Charley Partanna, needs a dose of bran. In Condon's mad early novels -- The Oldest Confession, The Manchurian Candidate -- marvelous characters seethed with venality and obsession. In the current book there is still enough corruption to go around, but not much narrative drive. Condon's Mafia greedsters now own 32% of what there...
FILMS GLORIFYING the criminal element seem to be quite the rage today. The great success of The Godfather, Prizzi's Honor and now Family Business attest to the popularity of these people we wouldn't want as neighbors. An affair with a woman and plagiarized speeches may be enough to bring down presidential candidates but murder, burglary and treachery only increase our enjoyment of a film...