For Charley Partanna (Jack Nicholson), life in the Prizzi family is good as long as he honors the wishes of the Godfather (William Hickey). Partanna is respected for ruthlessly carrying out murder contracts, but his wise-talking Brooklyn existence is turned on its head when he falls for a beautiful hit woman (Kathleen Turner) from the West Coast. He follows her back to California, balancing work commitments and his love interest until a new contract makes things difficult.
Alex North (1910-1991) studied music at the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia, then won a scholarship to Juillard in New York and the Moscow Conservatoire, making him the first-ever American to become a member of the Union of Soviet Composers. His score, composed by this movie of John Huston, adapts the music of Giacomo Puccini and Gioachino Rossini. His idea was to achieve various sybolic paralells between the characters of the film story and the main opera sources.