The last time Mickey Rourke and Walter Hill worked together, it was 1989 and the result was the underrated yet utterly bonkers and seedy revenge thriller, Johnny Handsome.
A lot has happened to both men since then – Hill, one of the great lean’n’mean directors of the 1970s and 1980s, hasn’t directed a feature since 2002’s boxing drama Undisputed, choosing instead to focus on television; while Rourke has embarked on his latest and possibly greatest comeback, with his role in The Wrestler set to bag him some Oscar gold in a couple of weeks.
So it’s heartening to see that one of the first gigs Rourke has booked since his return to prominence is St. Vincent, a hitman tale that will see his old mucker Walter get back behind the camera.
The plot, which has echoes of Rourke’s previous movie, A Prayer For The Dying, will see Rourke play a hitman who returns to his old neighbourhood in Noo Yawk to finish a botched job. For reasons we’re not entirely clear on, he ends up disguising himself as a priest… and taking the confession of the guy he’s meant to kill.
We don’t know about you, but we smell emotional complications that could end up in a redemptive bloodbath.
Cameron Young wrote the script for the movie, which should go before the cameras later this year. It still hasn’t been 100% confirmed that Rourke has accepted Marvel’s offer to play the bad guy in Iron Man 2 (if so, he already seems to be performing the ‘one for me, one for them’ trick beloved of so many character actors), so it’s currently uncertain if that movie will affect St. Vincent’s scheduling.
So… any **Johnny Handsome **fans out there excited by this unexpected reunion?