The 1980s films of Michael Caine | Mona Lisa (1986)

Our look back through the 1980s work of Michael Caine arrives at his sinister supporting role in Neil Jordan’s acclaimed Mona Lisa…

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Michael Caine showed no sign of slowing down as he entered his third decade as a leading man. The 1980s would see him win his first Academy Award (Hannah And Her Sisters), tackle new genres such as horror (The Hand) and shark-based revenge movie (Jaws: The Revenge) whilst continuing to work with interesting new auteurs like Brian De Palma (Dressed To Kill) as well as old friends from classic Hollywood such as John Huston (Escape to Victory).

Film by film, I’ll be taking a look at Caine’s 1980s filmography to see what hidden gems I can unearth alongside the more familiar classics…

Spoilers for Mona Lisa lay ahead…

Directed by: Neil Jordan (The Company Of Wolves, The Crying Game, Interview With The Vampire, Michael Collins)

Tagline: Sometimes love is a strange and wicked game.

Other Featured Geezers: Bob Hoskins as George, Cathy Tyson as Simone, Robbie Coltrane as Thomas, Clarke Peters as Anderson, Kate Hardie as Cathy.

What’s it all about, Alfie?: After seven years behind bars, low level career criminal George (Bob Hoskins) is back on the mean streets of London, but things aren’t like they used to be. His estranged wife no longer wants him to have any contact with her and their teenage daughter. His former boss, the sleazy local crime kingpin Mortwell (Michael Caine), is also keeping his distance.

Eventually George manages to get a job as a driver for high-class call girl Simone (Cathy Tyson). After initially clashing, a friendship slowly begins to blossom between the two, and Simone ends up enlisting the increasingly besotted George on a dangerous quest to find a missing young sex worker whom Simone has history with. However, Simone isn’t telling George the full story, and it’s not just feelings that ultimately end up getting hurt.

Caine-ness: Caine gets the coveted “And Michael Caine” billing at the end of the title credits. He’s only a supporting character in this, with probably less than ten minutes screentime overall, but he’s an incredibly important part of the film and makes a massive impact with this limited screentime.

We first see Caine as Denny Mortwell about 30 minutes into the film, after a build-up of hearing characters mention his name, and he’s a truly nasty piece of work, arguably the least sympathetic and most purely villainous character Caine’s so far played on screen.

He’s played ruthless gangsters before, most notably of course in Get Carter, unhinged murderers (Dressed To Kill, The Hand and Deathtrap) and a few dirty old men (Blame It On Rio, Hannah And Her Sisters) but all of these characters had at least a slither of charm or humanity. Mortwell has no such redeeming features.

Mortwell says to George; “Everyone hates me once in a while.” When interviewed about the film Caine talked about how in leading roles, even when playing a bad guy, he has had to find a sympathetic angle to play, but with a small supporting role like this he didn’t feel the need. So, reading between the lines, even Caine hated Mortwell.

Mortwell clearly thinks that he’s a big deal in the London underworld but he’s more Peter Stringfellow than Don Corleone. He isn’t an impressively suave criminal mastermind but a realistically sordid bloke that you wouldn’t want to bump into in a nightclub. His dress and manner is greasy and not classy. When he’s talking to George in his club, whilst sitting on a tacky seat shaped like a giant hand, he appears to have spilled something down his top.

Even when we later see him wearing a suit it’s not the most flattering fit (and he’s not wearing it out to the opera, he’s wearing it whilst sex trafficking and secretly filming his clients).

Mortwell is smug and conceited; spouting meaningless aphorisms at George; “life goes on, we can’t control it, we can only swim in it […] you get water on the brain and you get confused” and boasts about how; “I’m good at the little things, the little things that mean everything”. But he’s clearly not as intelligent and all-powerful as he acts, as he is relying on the clearly not too bright George, bless him, for important information and ultimately is bested by George and Simone.

As Mortwell, Caine amps up his cockney accent and he’s a lot brusquer than I can remember ever seeing him before. There’s a complete lack of warmth to his character, something that Caine normally effortlessly exudes.

There’s always a palpable menace bubbling beneath Mortwell’s calm exterior, whether we are seeing him sinisterly smoking whilst silhouetted under a fire exit sign or menacingly stroking a rabbit in a shadowy room. Not many people can make petting a cute little bunny threatening. Caine manages it.

After George returns to Mortwell without any juicy information on Simone’s high paying client, other than that they drink tea together, Mortwell violently snaps, smashing items off the counter and leaping up from his chair at George snarling; “I don’t want to know anything about tea”.

Caine believably sells the unpredictable violence inherent in this character in the shock of this sudden outburst. Also, his clear rejection of tea in this moment definitely confirms him as a wrong-un.

This is all a massive contrast to Caine’s last supporting role in Sweet Liberty, in which his philandering actor was incredibly charming and dashing in spite of his loose morals. In that film you grew to really like a character that could easily have been the antagonist.

Mortwell is a truly memorable and integral supporting role and I’d argue much more deserving of the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor than his role in Hannah and her Sisters that Caine won for in the same year.

Interestingly, over a decade prior, Caine turned down the role of the East End necktie murderer in Hitchcock’s Frenzy (1972) saying; “I have a sort of moral thing, and I refused to play it, and [Hitchcock] never spoke to me again. It was a film based on a real killer who cut women to smithereens. I said, ‘I can’t play this. I don’t want to play it.’”. He evidently relaxed his morals in his older age to play such a repugnant character in Mona Lisa. Although I suppose he doesn’t commit many heinous acts onscreen in this, which he would have done in Frenzy, and you also have slightly less to worry about in terms of tarnishing your star persona if you are already mostly past the romantic lead stage of your career.

Caine-nections: Bob Hoskins previously had two memorable supporting roles alongside Caine in 1983’s The Honorary Consul and 1986’s Sweet Liberty. Here it’s Caine who has a scene-stealing minor role.

Hoskins was nominated for Best Actor at the same Academy Awards ceremony in which Caine won Best Supporting Actor for Hannah and Her Sisters. Sadly, they wouldn’t have been able to hang out at the afterparty as Caine was in the Bahamas filming Jaws: The Revenge.

This is the second film of Caine’s films produced by HandMade films. Thankfully it’s a massive improvement on the former which was the dodgy comedy Water (1985).

Caine has played criminals of various ilk’s many times before including gangsters (Get Carter), contract killers (The Marseilles Contract), cat burglars (Deadfall and Gambit), money launderers (Silver Bears), bank robbers (Harry and Walter Go to New York) and general cheeky chappy criminals (The Italian Job).

*I’m only counting from Caine’s first starring role in Zulu onwards.

Best Non-Caine Actor: Caine is captivating in this but, of course, this is Bob Hoskins’ film through and through. It may have led to Hoskins being described as “like a testicle on legs” by Pauline Kael in her review of the film but it also led to a much-deserved Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

He lost out on the Oscar that year to Paul Newman in The Color Of Money and unfairly wasn’t nominated for another Oscar again in his career (did the Academy not watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit?)

However, he did win the award for Best Actor at both the BAFTAs and Cannes for Mona Lisa and this was the part that catapulted him to Hollywood leading roles (which included Super Mario Bros, so whether this was a blessing, or a curse, is thus debatable).

Hoskins is truly excellent in a difficult role. George is a complicated character, certainly not the traditional heroic lead in personality, looks or actions. He’s someone who does plenty of terrible, and some might even say unforgivable, things but Hoskins makes George so sympathetic and lovable that you can’t help but root for him. You could argue that ultimately George’s bark is worse than his bite, but his bite will still leave you with sizable teeth marks and the need for a rabies shot.

We experience George’s nasty temper within the first few minutes when he throws bins around, shouting and creating a general ruckus, outside his wife’s house after she refuses to have anything more to do with him. His rampage is thankfully put to a stop before anyone is hurt by his lovable bestie Thomas (Robbie Coltrane).

The threat of violence is there with George throughout though. We later see it when he brutally smashes a pimp’s head on his car window and his dark side most disturbingly emerges when he hits Simone during the film’s climax.

He’s also definitely not the most politically correct, he regularly uses inappropriate language, but it comes more from a place of ignorance rather than hate. After he offhandedly uses a racist term to refer to one of Simone’s clients, he sees her bridle and then immediately is regretful and apologises to her.

Hoskins deftly portrays this moral turmoil within George. Whereas Mortwell is entirely amoral and without conscience, George is deeply sensitive and emotional, but with a poor way of regulating this. After arguing with Simone he shouts at her to leave his car in the middle of the road but, immediately after she’s gone, we get a close up shot on his face, in which Hoskins does such a perfect job of silently conveying the guilt washing over George, and he subsequently quickly picks her back up again, and apologises gently and profusely.

It’s also a very funny performance. When he’s waiting for Simone at a fancy hotel and asks for a pot of tea, his response to the waiter’s query of “earl grey or lapsang souchong?” is an incredulous “No, tea!”. Hoskins can do scary, funny, threatening, lovable and all manner of other emotions, sometimes all within the same scene.

I imagine Robert Zemeckis must have watched the part where George confidently walks into a club holding a bunny, saying to the barman; “He’ll have a lettuce, and I’ll have a Bloody Mary” and thought, “Wow, this guy has great chemistry with rabbits, he’ll be perfect in my next film”.

Hoskins’ stellar performance is matched by Cathy Tyson as Simone. This was Tyson’s film debut and she was relatively unknown outside of the theatre world. Producer Denis O’Brien initially wanted more of a star and suggested Grace Jones for the role, after he saw her on A View To A Kill poster, but eventually he was rightly convinced to go with Tyson. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Grace Jones not be terrifying. I one hundred percent believe she could beat up Hoskins and Caine, and the film wouldn’t have worked if Simone was the scariest character, so I’m glad they went with Tyson.

Tyson is naturalistic and works great alongside Hoskins. Their antagonist friendship, laced with affection although platonic on her side, is entirely believable. Tyson sells Simone’s toughness but there is also a vulnerability and sadness to her. She feels entirely like a three-dimensional person even though we don’t really get too much backstory or insight into her feelings, she’s the titular inscrutable Mona Lisa type figure but Tyson adds so much verve and life to the character.

It was fun to see a young Robbie Coltrane as George’s affable friend Thomas. He has great chemistry with Hoskins and their scenes together chatting about books (Thomas is reading one about a dwarf who has been murdering opera singers) are a delight with their easy-going banter. Thomas had been sending George books whilst he was in prison, and one of their first conversations on the outside is George critiquing the latest murder mystery he read; “Shouldn’t have been the driver…I could pin him in the first chapter”.

Thomas is the most uncomplicatedly “nice” character. He may be a criminal, but his crimes are innocuous, such as fencing fluorescent Virgin Mary statues and assorted decorative food items including “fibre glass fruit flans” and  “polystyrene tutti fruttis”. George is particularly bemused by Thomas’ “ornamental spaghetti”, asking “Where’d you get it?”, “Contacts, George, you can’t find plastic spaghetti just anywhere.” He responds casually.

For the right money Simone will dress like your favourite Quality Street:

My Bleedin’ Thoughts: I hadn’t seen Mona Lisa before, and it was one of the films that I was most looking forward to watching for this feature. It didn’t disappoint.

This was director Neil Jordan’s third movie and was produced by George Harrison’s HandMade Films. Harrison himself was initially unsure of the script, preferring to mainly make comedies, but he trusted the judgement of his colleagues, who loved it, and ultimately supported the production.

Even though it most certainly isn’t a comedy, it is a surprisingly funny film, and it elegantly walks a tonal tightrope. It unflinchingly delves into grim subject matter and yet there is so much warmth and humour to its characters that the film is never bogged down in misery. This tonal contrast is most outwardly evident during the emotionally devasting scene between George and Simone on Brighton pier, which is all played out whilst the pair are wearing silly novelty glasses.

Another stand-out scene is when Anderson attacks George and Simone inside her apartment building, slashing George’s arm with a knife before they manage to escape. It’s brutal and shocking, feeling like something from a Giallo. But this intense scene of horror is subsequently punctuated by a moment of humour when George, because of his out-of-action bloodied arm, asks Simone if she can scratch his nose.

It has a solid score by Michael Kamen (composer for many iconic 80s and 90s movies including Highlander, Die Hard, Licence To Kill, Lethal Weapon and Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves) and a somewhat odd use of the song “In Too Deep” by Genesis which plays over an extended sequence of George searching peep shows and brothels in Soho for Simone’s missing friend. This was specifically written for the film by Phil Collins, but seems a little out of place.

There is lots of location shooting in London, and it acts as an intriguing snapshot into what the city was like in the 80s Although Kings Cross does look like it’s a dystopian wasteland from The Warriors or Escape From New York, which it very well may have been at the time, but thankfully it seems to have nowadays cleared up its act now that there’s a couple of Prets there.

Bob Hoskins Unsuccessfully Auditions for Rocketman:

Trivia (Courtesy of IMDB): In an earlier version of the script George was older and Sean Connery was suggested for the role, but he disliked the part. Hoskins ended up being the perfect choice for this role but what could have been an unusual Connery/Caine re-team is an enticing thought.

Mortwell states that it’s birthday and that he is 52. That was Caine’s actual age at the time of filming.

Kenny Baker and Jack Purvis, who were two of the titular Time Bandits in one of HandMade’s other hit movies, have a cameo as a pair of buskers on the Brighton pier.

Apparently, for a joke, when Caine was working with Hoskins on Sweet Liberty he told him that he’d been offered the part of Mortwell but had turned it down because it was too small and he was tired of playing villains. In actual fact he’d already accepted it but wanted to turn up on set and surprise Hoskins. It’s admittedly not the best practical joke, Jeremy Beadle had nothing to fear from Caine elbowing in on his market.

Overall Thoughts: A real gem. An extremely memorable purely villainous supporting turn from Caine and a tour-de-force starring role for Hoskins. Sad, funny and even at times disturbing. Definitely worth a watch.

Rating: 4.5/5 of Robbie Coltrane’s Polystyrene Tutti Fruttis

Where You Can Watch This: This is currently available to watch for free on whatever Channel 4 happen to be calling their online streaming platform this week, or to purchase on DVD and Blu-ray.

Up Next: In case you haven’t had enough of Caine getting up to funny business with London sex workers, he’s at it again in Half Moon Street alongside Sigourney Weaver.

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