Neil Jordan is a graduate of the Ken Loach I-Hate-England school of film-making which means that like Loach he spurns no opportunity to explore its worst aspects in loving detail. This time around it's the sex industry that sleazes its way into his spotlight. The story is improbable-to-ridiculous, one leave it out, guv, after another. Why, for example does Michael Caine's Mr Big wait til Bob Hoskins gets out of the slammer before hiring a driver for Cathy Tyson's hooker - what did she do before, take a bus? In turn why does Tyson wait until their initial antipathy has thawed before asking him to locate another hooker when 1) surely the world of London hookers is not that large, there's obviously some kind of network whereby one can locate another without charming a violent oaf into doing the job and 2) for what she spent kitting out Hoskins with shirts, suit and topcoat in a trendy Men's Store she could have hired a private detective for a month but given how easy the hooker was to find he'd have taken about a day and a half tops. This leaves us with the acting; for Hoskins it's the mixture as before, all contained violence and effing and blinding, sure he was phoning it in by that stage, Robbie Coltrane is totally unconvincing and Mike Tyson could have done as well as Cathy. Okay, it's twenty years old - a freebie with a newspaper, just as well I didn't spend more than the price of a paper I buy anyway on this pap - and maybe at the time it looked better but it's way past its sell-by date.
Review of Mona Lisa
