The reviews are uniformly warm. Most critics take Prizzi’s Honor as a black comedy that works, and they credit John Huston with holding a tone that keeps tipping between funny and grim without ever falling over. The praise clusters on the direction and the screenplay: the dialogue is picked out again and again, and several reviews note the logic by which a romance between two hired killers collides with a Brooklyn family’s Sicilian sense of honour, so that the plot’s harshest decisions feel inevitable. Nicholson’s stretch into a slow, street-accented hitman is approved of, as is Turner, and a few single out Anjelica Huston.
Where they part is over how much the film finally amounts to. The spread is narrow, running from good to one of Huston’s best. Empire is the mildest voice, finding it slight and grimly amusing rather than a high point, and Nicholson short of his best work. The New York Times admires the balancing act while stopping short of a rave. Nobody dismisses it.