Sometimes the greatest things lie just underneath the surface, and that’s a pretty good summary for Johnny Handsome, which Lions Gate sent me a copy of to review for its Blu-ray release.

Johnny Handsome follows a criminal with a serious facial deformity that’s earned him the name of the title character–Johnny Handsome. When he’s taking to jail following a botched robbery in which his old friend is killed and he’s betrayed by his fellow thieves, he gets a new chance at life following an assassination attempt in prison–he’s given a new face via surgery, a new identity, and a whole new opportunity…for revenge.

First off, Mickey Rourke is an absolute genius in this one–he does a great job as the facially-deformed title character, managing to be both sympathetic and horrifying by stretches. Second off, the rest of the movie around him does at least a fair job of being competently done.

And between Morgan Freeman and Lance Henriksen, you know you’ve got two more truly awesome performances.

The rest of the movie, meanwhile, is a surprisingly smart crime drama that will take plenty of twists as it proceeds, and will wind up being a caper flick that, in many ways, is easily on par with Ocean’s Eleven. I can’t tell you a whole lot about it, sadly, as I’d wind up spoiling most of it for you.  But you can remain assured that this does really well.

Admittedly, the ending is something of a downer in a roundabout sort of way, but still, it’s very appropriate given what we’ve been watching.  It too is a pretty big surprise, and very watchable.

Between great performances and a fantastic cast, it’s not at all difficult to recommend Johnny Handsome, and thus the Screenhead Ten Scale gives it an eight out of ten.  Sure, the ending is a bit of a downer, but the movie itself is sufficiently compelling to hold interest for its run time, and that’s definitely a worthwhile cause as far as movies go.  In the end, it’s really the only cause worth mentioning.