George (Bob Hoskins) has just been released from prison – he was a driver for a mysterious London crime boss (Michael Caine) and took the fall for a job gone wrong, resulting in seven years of incarceration. His return to society is far from as ideal as he’d hoped it would be – his family has abandoned him, with his ex-wife seeing him as a toxic influence on their daughter, as his status as a convicted criminal will always linger on his reputation. The only person he can rely on is his friend Thompson (Robbie Coltrane), an eccentric mechanic who seems to be the sole individual who understands George. However, in looking to get some form of compensation for his role in preventing his former boss from being convicted as well, George finds himself once again taking on the role of a driver – this time to the beautiful but mysterious Simone (Cathy Tyson), an escort who has successfully transitioned from the streets to the more elite members of the upper-class, liaising almost exclusively with a higher pedigree of client. George takes on the role of both her driver, transporting her between various appointments, and a bodyguard, defending her against the inevitable scuffles that occur along the way. As their working relationship flourishes into a friend, Simone begs George for his help – years before, when she was working on the streets, a friend of hers went missing. She fears for this girl’s life, and asks George to find her – and the combination of needing to prove his own worth, and the fact that he is slowly falling in love with Simone, compels George to undertake the nearly impossible task, and facing the many perils that will undoubtedly come with it.

Crime films normally tend to take many different forms – you have the ones that make use of excessive violence, and those that tend to go towards a more subversive, darkly-comical view of its subject matter. There are those that are incredibly mysterious in the way the story unfolds, and those that are extremely open in what they’re attempting to convey. The film that brings all of these elements together, in addition to some other aspects that are almost foreign to the genre, is Mona Lisa, the utterly brilliant film by Neil Jordan that resists any form of categorization, being a panoply of ideas and emotions that coalesce in one of the most memorable works of cinema of its era. A gritty exploration of the human condition, done from the perspective of a man trying to find his way through a world he no longer recognizes or understands, Mona Lisa is a daring film that caters to a sense of intimacy that many similar films often tend to neglect in favour of a more ghastly, heartless approach to such complex subject matter. A beautifully poetic ode to human desire and the unbearable anguish of alienation, Jordan has crafted one of the most poignant tales of humanity, funnelling it through an enthralling crime thriller that is never simply the sum of its parts, but rather a daring look into the mind of a group of individuals who are divided by their different motivations but united by a shared humanity in simply trying to find someplace to call home, whether physically or emotionally.

One of the first aspects that strike the viewer when venturing into the wonderfully unique world that Jordan constructs with Mona Lisa is how it’s not an ordinary crime film in any way – the general classification of this film as a neo-noir is structurally correct, based on the faction of society that the plot looks at. Yet, it’s still very reductive to consider it through even such a broad generic lens, as there is so much more lurking beneath the surface of this film, certain elements that thrive on the more subversive narrative paths that Jordan and co-writer David Leland explore in this poignant metaphysical drama. Far from ordinary in any sense, there’s anger to this film that feels almost unprecedented, even for the boldest entries into this genre – the tensions that are evoked throughout the film always feel as if they’re on the verge of eruption, and the presence of a story that normally devolves into unhinged anger doesn’t prevent us from always being on tenterhooks, waiting for that moment in which Jordan unleashes the fury, which doesn’t come right until the end (and when it does, it’s bleaker than it is rousing). Every time we believe the film is finally going to venture into the darker territory, the precipice of which it constantly appears to be on, Jordan deviates and instead presents us with a gorgeously humane moment, whether a moment of genuine emotion on the part of either of the two protagonists or a brief instant of heartfelt humour. The director keeps everything at the fundamentally human level in Mona Lisa, which is why the film is able to be such a powerful work, as its deviations are always of form, and never of the achingly beautiful narrative core that propels it forward.

One of the reasons Mona Lisa has such fascinating cultural cache isn’t only as a result of it being one of Jordan’s first true successes as a filmmaker, but also due to the performance given by Bob Hoskins, who turns in what is undeniably his strongest work. His career, both before and after this film, was always defined by being typecast as this kind of wisecracking, East London heavy who always had a shred of humanity in him, even when at his most despicable or morally questionable. George is perhaps Hoskins’ first truly heroic role, which isn’t always clear from both the description of the character and the way he is personified. However, this is where Mona Lisa is truly brilliant – there’s an authenticity to what the actor is doing here, where he plays George with an unprecedented authenticity that challenges the boundaries normally seen in characters aligned with the archetype of the sinister, low-level gangster. Much like the film around him, Hoskins’ character is motivated by a humanity that simply didn’t exist in the majority of crime stories, and he does exceptionally well in evoking the honesty required to make George such a compelling character. Hoskins is simply a revelation in the role – he’s as funny and eccentric as he always was, but found himself venturing into a deeper place with this character, finding an emotional complexity that he was rarely ever afforded to opportunity to explore. There are some wonderful performances in the supporting capacity as well – Caine is delightfully dastardly as a truly pathetic villain, and Coltrane brings a warmth that the film truly benefits from. Yet, Hoskins is only matched in both heart and brilliance by Tyson, whose empathy and honesty elevate this film even further than it already was.

The performances given by Hoskins and Tyson were fascinating for several reasons, most of all in how Jordan uses two archetypes to create something entirely unique from a set of conventional character traits. Hoskins is the hardened ex-convict criminal with a heart of gold, Tyson the mysterious escort who is the catalyst for the main character’s mission. However, it goes far beyond this in many ways, to the point where we even begin to question if this could be classified as a noir at all, especially since its fashioned as a romance more than anything else. This isn’t reductive of the fascinating insights Jordan gives into the machinations of underground crime in London, but rather supplementary to the story. We are witness to so many films that present us with grizzled criminals surrendering themselves to the glamourous but merciless nature of a life of crime, but very few that stand at the fundamentally human level. There’s a sentimentality that underpins Mona Lisa that isn’t seen all that often, and like many great cinematic predecessors, this film utilizes the idea of a man dedicated to his line of work encountering a woman that throws him off-balance and forces him into a more compromised position due to his growing fascination with her. The difference is, Mona Lisa, foregrounds the idea of the detective archetype falling in love with the femme fatale, which never resorting to the hackneyed “damsel in distress” storyline, while still containing some elements that make the final act of the film so touching, but also deeply harrowing, with the director taking familiar subject matter and manipulating it in a thoroughly unique and often incredibly audacious way, where it doesn’t need to rely on the tropes that built the genre, but rather lovingly pay homage to them by going in its own original direction.

The film goes to some very dark places but also manages to be effervescent and upbeat at some moments – and it’s in these quieter sequences of deep humanity that we realize the true extent to which Jordan has made a remarkably compelling film. The undying compassion that surges through Mona Lisa is heavily contrasted with the director’s intentions in crafting a slightly insurgent entry into the genre that doesn’t disrupt the more traditional aspects, but rather agitates them in such a way that he’s able to exploit some of their less-understood concepts. In keeping every remarkably restrained and elegant, the director never allows for the glimmer of hope that strengthens the film and gives it nuance to dissipate in favour of the unhinged violence or deep despair that normally persists in this category of film. Formed as a powerful metaphysical drama with moments of extraordinary levity and innumerable instances where it goes against tradition to deliver something wonderfully unique, but still very much aligned with what we’d expect from the earlier years of neo-noir filmmaking. Formed with sincerity, and executed effectively, whereby the simplicity of the premise and its intersections with the more immovable aspects of the noir, the film is an incredibly riveting excursion into the depths of the human condition, traversing many different genres to flourish into a wonderfully unique, unflinchingly earnest work of defiant brilliance. Neil Jordan truly struck something very special with Mona Lisa, and in bringing to life this intrepid story, and handing it to Bob Hoskins and Cathy Tyson, who do extraordinary work in their capacity as the leads, the audience is left with an exhilarating, complex crime masterpiece that is never content to just be the sum of its parts, and yearns to be more than what it sets out to be – and it does just that by being an explosive, heartfelt exercise in unrestrained cinematic artistry.