Happy New Year! Christmas is now over, and what better way to bring in the new year than a new proposal. This will be my twenty-seventh proposal overall, with my most recent being in December (which was a Christmas special, so I was happy to do that), and my first of the new year, and there currently being five proposals active.
This will be my fourth copy-and-paste from Tropers Hub. https://tropershub.forumotion.com/t67p660-cm-proposal-thread-archive-5#8750.
What is the work?[]
Johnny Handsome is an overlooked crime thriller directed by Walter Hill and starring a reasonable sized cast, including our villains (Lance Henriksen and Ellen Barkin), and has Mickey Rourke as the title character. Released in 1989.
Who are Rafe Garrett and Sunny Boyd? What have they Done?[]
Rafe Garrett and Sunny Boyd are a duo of crazed thugs who are first seen planning out a heist with protagonist John Sedley and his father figure and one true friend Mikey. The two dislike Johnny because of his facial deformities and speech impediment, but have to put that aside for the mission.
Sunny puts on a wig and distracts the store owner by pretending to be a customer, while John, Mikey, and Rafe put on masks and hold up the store, with Rafe pistol-whipping a man or two. While it seems to go smoothly at first (or what compensates as smoothly for them at least), that goes out the window when the store owner raises the alarm.
Rafe is pissed and shoots him in the head repeatedly, and then betrays and shoots Mikey, while he and Sunny leave the store and murder their other accomplice, and leave Johnny behind to be arrested by the police and sent to prison. While Johnny is in jail, the two attempt to have him murdered by hiring some thugs to viciously stab him to death, although Johnny survives this and is hospitalized, and is questioned about them by Lieutenant A.Z. Drones.
Johnny volunteers to go through a facial reconstruction program, where an optimistic Dr. Steven Resher works to literally change his face and allow him to live out a new life, while a story is run saying that Johnny died in prison. Rafe and Sunny read this story and are pleased that he is seemingly dead, but argue with each other. But Johnny refuses to renounce his revenge, and with his new face and identity as John Mitchell, he gets close to them, and plans out another heist with them. Johnny and Sunny get somewhat close to each other, and Sunny suggests leaving Rafe behind when they are done.
They carry out their robbery where Johnny now works. Sunny seduces the apparent boss and takes him to his office, and attacks and beats him down and forces him to turn off the alarm. While Rafe takes hostages, and violently attacks several of them, and makes it clear that he will kill them if they don't comply. They escape with their earnings, while Johnny and Sunny suggest that they separate, although this was a ruse, although Johnny then tells her that he will split up and hide the money.
Rafe is pissed at Sunny for seemingly betraying him and threatens to kill her, but she then tells her that Johnny took off with the money, and they go to his apartment, and they find Donna, a woman that Johnny was semi-close to and hold her at gunpoint, and then they find pictures of Johnny when he was deformed. They are now pissed, and plan to kill him when they get their money. Still pretending to be allies, they arrange to meet at a cemetery.
Rafe and Sunny reveal that they have his girlfriend and that they know who Johnny really is. The force him to hand over the suitcase full of cash, and then Rafe proceeds to inflict a brutal beatdown on Johnny, and then cut at his face with a knife, while Sunny encourages him while forcing Donna to watch, but tells him that she wants to kill Johnny herself.
While they seem to have forced Johnny's compliance, Johnny and Donna are somewhat able to turn the tables on them, as Donna narrowly escapes gunpoint, while Johnny pulls out a hidden gun, and then kills them and their right-hand Larry. Although Johnny is fatally wounded himself, but he dies happy that he got revenge, and dies seeing Donna looking at him with his non-deformed face. Had Johnny lived, he would have just spent the rest of his life incarcerated anyways, since Drones had caught him and he would have been a three-time felon.
Redeeming Qualities?[]
No need to bother here. While they are partners (they used to be romantic, but no longer), they can barely hide the fact that they each other's guts, and only work together for pragmatic reasons. They argue constantly and unaffectionately, and Rafe threatens to have her sent back to the brothel he found her in -- although she corrects him and says that that's where she found him -- and threatens to shoot her after she seemingly betrayed him.
Sunny for her part, belittles him and calls him an idiot constantly, and offers to leave him for Johnny (unaware that he was John Sedley who they threw to the wolves.) And of course this states that Sunny was a prostitute, but we don't know how bad she had it, and it's never used for sympathy points here, and this doesn't appear to affect her other behaviors.
Heinous Standard?[]
General Standard[]
This was a slight concern that I had going in, but they don't have any problems here. They have four total kills between them, (one of them is a more personal kill, and one of them is the protagonist of the movie), but their kills aren't what make them bad enough alone. They also violently attack and threaten to kill several hostages, with their behavior both past and present making it clear that these threats are not bluffs, they kidnap and threaten to murder Donna, and then at the end they brutally torture Johnny and violently cut his face with a knife (in front of a terrified and distraught Donna no less), adding an additional flair of cruelty to their rapsheet.
In-Story Standard/System Standard[]
As far as how they compare to each other? Well, Rafe is the one with the more direct and dirty rapsheet of the two, and is more openly brutal, but Sunny is the more calculated and planning of the two, with her enabling the things that she doesn't outright order or do herself. And nobody else in the film is bad enough compared to these two, who are consistently portrayed as the worst of the worst within the film. Their man Larry (who they mistreat) only second hand helps them with some of their things.
Final Verdict[]
They're not my most heinous candidates, but they are bad enough for what they are.