Mona Lisa

It is precisely that interplay between tenderness and ruthlessness that is the special excitement of Mona Lisa, one of the year's most spellbinding films. [2 July 1986, p.C3]

A wonderful achievement, a dark film with a generous heart in the shape of an extraordinarily touching performance from Hoskins.

Hoskins and costar Cathy Tyson of the Royal Shakespeare Company are an electric couple, with their disparate colors and shapes. She's class; he's crass. Their turbulent teamwork is augmented with sure supporting performances by Michael Caine, as the flesh-peddling villain Mortwell; and British comedian Robbie Coltrane, as George's teddy bear of a best friend, Thomas. [18 July 1986, p.31]

His vision is most immediately reminiscent of from the hellish New York of Scorsese's Taxi Driver, but Hoskins provides the crucial difference, spiking the nihilism by emerging from the abyss with a glimmer of hope instead of a thousand-yard stare.

The world Jordan envisions is desperate, but Hoskins’s human heart offers a lovely thread of hope.

NEIL JORDAN'S Mona Lisa is classy kitsch. It's as smooth and distinctive (and, ultimately, as insubstantial) as the old Nat (King) Cole recording of the song, which gives the film its title and a lot of its mood. It's also got high style, so you needn't hate yourself for liking it.

Ultimately, there is something trite at the centre of the movie, most especially in the overuse of Nat King Cole’s haunting Mona Lisa to suggest Tyson’s ambiguity and Hoskins’s puzzlement. But this is almost concealed by Tyson’s sense of desperation and Hoskins’s painful sincerity.