Johnny Handsome

TriStar Pictures | Release Date: September 29, 1989

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

60	METASCORE Mixed or average reviews based on 15 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

Roger Ebert

This is a movie in the true tradition of film noir -- which someone who didn't write a dictionary once described as a movie where an ordinary guy indulges the weak side of his character, and hell opens up beneath his feet. Read full review

Dave Kehr

Johnny Handsome does indeed put Hill back in the ballpark, close enough to his best work to make its imperfections seem that much more maddening. [29 Sep 1989, p.A]

Staff (Not Credited)

Director Walter Hill and screenwriter Ken Friedman invite you to anticipate everything that happens in their story. As each event takes place as expected, you experience the grim satisfaction of seeing fate fulfilled. [13 Apr 1990, p.10]

Janet Maslin

Because Johnny Handsome is a film by Walter Hill (The Warriors, Streets of Fire), it crams the following things into its first five minutes: gunfire, screeching brakes, a drug-popping hoodlum, a moll in black leather, a violent robbery, one murder, sinister masks, shattering glass. But because this is Mr. Hill's work, these ingredients are slapped together with high style. Read full review

Hal Hinson

Walter Hill's "Johnny Handsome" feels like a shiv jammed between your ribs in a prison-yard fight. It's clean and brutal and so ruthlessly efficient that it's opened a hole in you almost before you've realized it. Read full review

Jay Carr

Johnny Handsome may lapse into downbeat formula, but its acting is pungent, and, in the case of Barkin and Henriksen, as immediate as a razor slash. [29 Sep 1989, p.34]

Bill Cosford

This is a B-movie through and through, and no less fun for that. [29 Sep 1989, p.G12]

EmpireKim Newman

New Orleans looks as photogenic as ever but ultimately Johnny Handsome never quite leapfrogs over its fundamental cracks. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

Barkin and Henriksen perform with relish, Whitaker and Freeman are pleasantly understated. Rourke tries harder than ever to minimise, nay obscure, his good looks, a process which merely serves to emphasise them. Read full review

The IndependentAnthony Lane

It all makes for an admirable rather than a likeable work, one which hardens its heart against contentment and even good luck. [13 May 1990, p.21]

Pauline Kael

The only sanity here is in some of the acting. Rourke does a fine, competent job, but the movie is stolen clear away by Morgan Freeman and Forest Whitaker as antagonists -- a tough minded veteran police detective and a warm, idealistic prison doctor.

Michael Wilmington

This movie can spot the handsome face that lies beneath an ugly exterior, but it seems to get fooled by the rot that sometimes lurks beneath the sweet and the safe, the formula and the sure-fire. Read full review

TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)

Hill's action scenes here are surprisingly perfunctory, but his narrative exposition is superb--a model of minimalist restraint in lurid circumstances. Hill also maintains his ability to push his actors in interesting directions here, though Rourke's laconic performance fails to pay off. Read full review

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Walter Hill directed this 1989 feature from a pulpy script by Ken Friedman (based on John Godey’s novel The Three Worlds of Johnny Handsome), and its nasty, predictable plot and unpleasant characters aren’t made any more bearable by Hill’s customary smoke, sweat, funk, and neon. Read full review

Hal Lipper

Like most of Hill's movies, Johnny Handsome plays like an outline: a good idea in need of development. [29 Sep 1989, p.7]