Johnny Handsome (1989)

Rourke stars as the title character, a hideously disfigured crook who teams up with his best friend Mikey (Scott Wilson) and two volatile lowlifes, Rafe (Lance Henriksen) and Sunny (Ellen Barkin), to knock over a coin shop. The robbery goes bad; Rafe shoots and kills Mikey and leaves Johnny wounded.

In prison, a doctor (Forest Whitaker) gives him plastic surgery in the hopes of reforming him. Johnny even gets a work furlough and begins seeing a pretty accountant (Elizabeth McGovern). But a New Orleans police Lieutenant (Morgan Freeman) knows what know one else will admit: that Johnny will be looking for revenge.

It's essentially a modern film noir, but one that springs naturally from within the genre, rather than something that exists outside, paying tribute. Like many other B-movie makers before him, Hill keeps the action sequences fast and clear, but undeniably violent.

But in-between, he gets good, strong performances from his entire cast, and builds up touching emotional connections between characters; I especially liked Freeman, who had just come off a career-launching Oscar nomination for Street Smart (1987), and -- oddly enough -- appeared in Driving Miss Daisy later the same year.

In 2009, Lionsgate re-issued Johnny Handsome on DVD, but they literally took the old 2002 Artisan DVD and placed a new cardboard sleeve over it. The old Artisan release was pretty lousy: it was panned-and-scanned with a murky, low-contrast transfer. It looked like a VHS tape. Thankfully Lionsgate righted this wrong in 2010 with an excellent new Blu-Ray, transferred in hi-def and widescreen, with a couple of behind-the-scenes featurettes, a trailer and a still gallery.