--- title: "Prizzi's Honor" year: 1985 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/prizzis-honor" fi1m_score: 82 critics_score: 84 critics_reviews: 5 published: "2026-09-17T20:14:08.810258+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T20:14:09.335790+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Prizzi's Honor (1985) Directed by John Huston · 2h 04m · MPA R · Romance, Comedy, Crime **Fi1m score: 82** · Critics 84 (early) from 5 reviews *In a sentence:* The hired killers seem terribly pleased to have found someone with similar interests > John Huston’s *Prizzi’s Honor* is a sly, funny crime romance that takes its killers’ feelings seriously. The plotting needs patience, but Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner make the courtship worth following even when the family business gets cumbersome. ## Synopsis Charley Partanna (Jack Nicholson) earns his living as a hired killer. When he falls for Irene Walker (Kathleen Turner), romance brings him close to someone whose line of work resembles his own. Their relationship has to make room for the Prizzi family and the obligations that come with Charley’s profession. John Huston directs this crime comedy about love, loyalty and the business of killing, with Anjelica Huston as Maerose Prizzi, William Hickey as Don Corrado Prizzi and Robert Loggia as Eduardo Prizzi. As the couple try to fit a private life around their work, family expectations complicate their plans. ## Review *Prizzi’s Honor* is a dark comedy worth seeing for how calmly John Huston lets its hired killers consider themselves suitable romantic partners. Charley Partanna and Irene Walker have good reason to understand each other’s working lives, which hardly makes falling in love straightforward. The film gives their feelings proper weight without asking us to forget their profession. Huston finds plenty to laugh at in the arrangement, and much of the pleasure comes from watching people discuss murder with the seriousness they bring to family obligations. Jack Nicholson makes Charley a slow-thinking man whose solemnity can be funny without a line needing to announce the joke. His gangster accent is conspicuous, and the deliberate stiffness occasionally feels like more acting than the character needs. We were surprised to find ourselves touched by his courtship. Nicholson lets Charley’s romantic eagerness show through the heavy manner, giving us a reason to care about this hired killer’s happiness. That makes the scenes with Kathleen Turner’s Irene more involving than the premise alone would suggest. Turner’s Irene has an assurance that keeps the romance from becoming an extended Nicholson routine. She holds our attention without needing to match his mannerisms, and their differences give the courtship much of its humour. Richard Condon and Janet Roach’s screenplay, adapted from Condon’s novel, makes room for the Prizzi family without reducing the lovers to pieces in a crime plot. The conversations about loyalty matter because Huston has persuaded us to take the relationship seriously. Andrzej Bartkowiak’s cinematography serves the comedy by keeping our attention on the people doing the talking. So much depends on watching a face while someone weighs an apparently reasonable proposition with an appalling consequence. J. Dennis Washington’s production design keeps these rooms convincing as places where business gets done, allowing the conversations to become more outrageous without making the whole setting feel like a joke. Huston is comfortable letting an exchange between seated people supply the action. Editors Rudi Fehr and Kaja Fehr handle the changes from romance to threat without making either seem misplaced. They are less successful at keeping the complicated plotting brisk. At 124 minutes, the film occasionally makes us wait too long between the sharper exchanges, and following the business dealings becomes work. Alex North’s music suits the lovers’ heightened seriousness, though we sometimes wanted it to give the performances more room. The actors are quite capable of making the courtship funny and troubling without encouragement. Anjelica Huston’s Maerose Prizzi and William Hickey’s Don Corrado Prizzi help keep the family from becoming a vague pressure somewhere off screen. Hickey makes authority feel peculiar and faintly unnerving, while Anjelica Huston’s watchfulness keeps drawing our attention. The film needs this wider company because the lovers’ obligations must matter as much as their attraction. The supporting performances give the family scenes their own comic interest. Gangster comedies can become cosy once the criminals start behaving like relatives we recognise. Huston lets that familiarity remain uncomfortable, and refuses to make his killers harmless for the sake of an easier laugh. The patience required is mostly repaid by the attention given to these people and their alarming ideas about loyalty. See it for the courtship, and allow the family a little too much time to explain itself. *Fi1m score 82, published 17 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (7) - **Los Angeles Times**, Sheila Benson (90/100, inferred): Huston shapes the story into a resoundingly comic love story with sobering underpinnings, imagining The Maltese Falcon set in Brooklyn and done like an Italian opera. It is a rich, dense character comedy with an unblinking eye at love and family loyalty, Sicilian style. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-06-14-ca-2456-story.html) - **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (90/100, inferred): The critic calls it one of Huston's very best films, a bizarre dark comedy where two professional killers fall in love and find the mob isn't big enough for both. The plot's logical collision of romance and family honor makes shocking decisions feel inevitable. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/prizzis-honor-1985) - **The New Yorker**, Pauline Kael (85/100, inferred): The picture revels in the murderous finagling of a Brooklyn Mafia family with a daring comic tone like The Godfather acted by The Munsters, using Italian opera arias to point up their sentimentality. Its elation and springiness make it feel like the work of a young director. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1985/07/01/ripeness) - **Time Out**, CPea (80/100, inferred): The critic finds the film a stylish black comedy about a hit man and assassin whose romance turns deadly. Huston is praised for expertly blending tones including irony and camp into a coherent narrative focused on faces talking in rooms. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/prizzis-honor) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (75/100, inferred): John Huston's film packs love, sex, murder and dark comedy into a labyrinthine tale of a hit man who falls for a woman who turns out to be his counterpart in hired killings. Nicholson convincingly stretches into a street-tough accented gangster role while Turner jolts with her loveliness in key scenes. [Read](https://variety.com/1984/film/reviews/prizzi-s-honor-1200426496/) - **Empire**, William Thomas: The critic describes it as a slight but grimly amusing Mafia spoof with Jack Nicholson as a not-overbright mob hitman. It is enjoyable overall but not one of Nicholson's best performances. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/prizzi-honour-review/) - **The New York Times**, Janet Maslin (NYT Critic’s Pick): Huston's black comedy walks a narrow tightrope between funny and serious as a stolid Mafia hit man falls for a glamorous fellow professional killer. The film captures the book's unique quality of being not just one thing. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/09/movies/film-prizzi-s-honor-takes-a-comic-view-of-deadly-lovers.html) ## Details - **Director:** John Huston - **Director:** John Huston - **Screenplay:** Janet Roach, Richard Condon - **Novel:** Richard Condon - **Cinematography:** Andrzej Bartkowiak - **Editor:** Rudi Fehr, Kaja Fehr - **Music:** Alex North - **Production design:** J. Dennis Washington - **Costume design:** Donfeld - **Producer:** John Foreman - **Cast:** Jack Nicholson as Charley Partanna; Kathleen Turner as Irene Walker; Robert Loggia as Eduardo Prizzi; John Randolph as Angelo 'Pop' Partanna; William Hickey as Don Corrado Prizzi; Lee Richardson as Dominic Prizzi; Michael Lombard as Rosario Filargi " Finlay "; Anjelica Huston as Maerose Prizzi - **Runtime:** 2h 04m - **Certificate (MPA):** R - **Release (the US):** 14 June 1985 - **Genres:** Romance, Comedy, Crime - **Box office:** $27 million ## Where to watch in the US - Amazon Prime Video: rent $4.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $11.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-15.* Also available in: BR, GB, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1986: Best Actor (nominated); Best Costume Design (nominated); Best Director (nominated); Best Film Editing (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Supporting Actor (nominated); Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (nominated); Best Supporting Actress (won) ## If you liked this - *Trouble in Paradise* (1932): Romance between professionals whose criminal skills do little to simplify their feelings - *The Ladykillers* (1955): For criminal incompetence played with straight faces and no shortage of malice - *Divorce Italian Style* (1961): Another black comedy where respectable family expectations make murder seem almost reasonable - *A New Leaf* (1971): Murderous calculation runs into unexpected affection, with the comedy kept pleasingly dry - *The Hit* (1984): Hired killers, awkward companionship and a patient refusal to make violence cosy --- © Fi1m Ltd. 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