Alternate Best Supporting Actor 1986: Michael Caine in Mona Lisa

Michael Caine did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Denny Mortwell in Mona Lisa. 

Michael Caine had a decent show of range for 86 between his Oscar winning performance as a fussy intellectual type going through an affair with his own wife’s sister in Hannah and Her Sisters, and the extreme shift away from that here as a gangster Mortwell, who gives recently released from prison George (Bob Hoskins) a job chauffeuring high class prostitute Simone (Cathy Tyson). The full backstory we get from Mortwell and George is relatively limited though with key hints within just a few lines of dialogue, and through the performances of Hoskins and Caine. Caine’s work has largely a singular purpose here as the central villain of the piece but what can elevate things is a keyed in performance which is what Caine delivers here. On one hand this is an entirely successful villain turn by Caine. He is menacing, particularly using his height against Hoskins to very much emphasize that presence in their scenes together, or even with Tyson as well. Caine enforces himself in certain scenes and very much presents himself with the inherent threat of Mortwell within his presence. Caine calling back, but artfully twisting his work from Get Carter, where you have that same kind of cold intensity within his work, which like that film is remarkable in itself given Caine’s common cinematic presence is charming and approachable. Caine here isn’t charming, he’s not approachable, and he is intimidating by removing those extended presence elements, yet unlike Get Carter where he is the protagonist, Caine shortens the leash that much more to make his depiction of Mortwell that much colder and contained. Which in a fascinating way the less Caine does, the more oppressive he becomes, as Caine looking at someone usually is affable, here when he stares, there is a soullessness about him that unnerves you. 

Caine is the effective villain which would be enough for this to be a good performance but what makes this a standout Caine performance is creating the sense of history and internal life within Mortwell that adds color to the role and the film. I love Caine's way of creating the story of Mortwell where we are granted the sense of basically a gangster attempting to elevate himself beyond that of the street thug, but is struggling to do so. Something we allude to in his background with George where we get the sense, George took a fall for the sake of Mortwell with the promise that Mortwell would take care of him. And what we get from Caine in one of his early scenes is a man attempting to reinvent himself, despite still being himself, as we see him talk with George with a skewed and phony grotesque version of how someone like Mortwell would believe “high class” would be. Caine’s amazing in a way by muting his own charm instead presenting someone like Mortwell failing to be charming. Caine has a smile but there’s an obvious sleaze behind it. There's a way of chatting up George like he has big plans for himself, but Caine delivers the words as empty platitudes. What Caine shows is more comfortable, or at least more natural is the violence sleazy gangster beneath any of that. Such as when George trespasses on Mortwell working a deal, Caine in a second's notice shows the real truth of Mortwell as he shows his teeth quickly and you see the vile man beneath that. Contrasting that is Mortwell pushing George to get blackmailing info on a client of Simone’s where again the asking moment is with phoniest kindly quality in Caine’s performance that perfectly sets up a gangster pretending to be far more than he ever could be. Again we see the real man, where Caine is so brutally honest by being horrible in the just barely held together raging frustration as George fails to perform what he has asked. Whenever Caine appears he makes an impact, and one of my favorite scenes honestly is when George rescues Simone’s fellow prostitute from a house Mortwell is overseeing, and we just see the silent reaction of a calm menace that is perfect work from Caine in showing the calculations in Mortwell without saying a thing. Leading to the ending where we get great acting from Caine where he begins by being terrifying by starting so quiet, letting the menace just ooze by only using the implication of danger (IASP reference intentional). As Caine presents essentially any civilized quality of Mortwell being forced and breaking down as his portrayal of the snap is not a gradual build up but just the natural reveal of the reality of Mortwell as he begins to openly threaten her and browbeat George, before physically assaulting her. We get a great subversion of this, however where the moment Simone fights back, by shooting him with a hidden gun, I love that Caine shows all the bluster and immediately leaves Mortwell and his delivery of his screams to George to help him are just a genuine pathetic man begging for his life. Caine delivers a great micro reflection of Hoskins’s work, by instead of slowly revealing the good man within the thug, Caine reveals only more sleaze, darkness and insecurity within the “respectable businessman”.