Best Actor 1985: Jack Nicholson in Prizzi's Honor

Jack Nicholson received his eighth nomination for playing Charley Partanna a mafia hit man in Prizzi's Honor.

Prizzi's Honor is an okay but overly long film about a mafia hit man who marries a Hit Woman and the trouble that arise from that. It it is not that funny though, and it hardly gives that interesting of a portrait of the mob. 

Jack Nicholson chooses to do an odd Brooklyn accent in the film, I guess it is to be funny, but it becomes almost a fatal mistake in the performance. First of all it just sounds strange and unnatural. Then that makes it so it hurts every single thing that he does. Thirdly the accent is never exactly the same and is always off.

Nicholson also chooses to do a lot of mannerisms in this performance. He does not do his usual effective ones either, instead he does odd and overdone ones. Such as shaking his hands and his head in an odd way when he says things. He also does something always a little off with his mouth. Altogther all these things are probably suppose to be funny, or entertaining but they just comes off as false. These things do not help his performance and unfortunately drive it in some ways. Some scenes it is difficult not to ignore the overdone way he talks and his over the top faces. Any potential good from his performance cannot even come because of these unnecessary mannerisms.

This is one of the least charismatic and magnetic performances by Nicholson. In a most of the scenes he is never interesting and comes off a just plain dull. He never really makes anything out of his performance. He never creates a interesting character, and this just a disappointing performance from Nicholson. He has one good scene where he talks about being alone, and tries to save his wife in front of the crime family. Otherwise than this scene though his performance goes from nothing to just bad.