The Long Good Friday (1980)

It's not about safety, it's about honour.

It's the early 1980s, it's Good Friday, and Harold Shand is waiting to entertain some powerful American muscle. He hopes to get them to help fund his dockside development, but someone is murdering his men, and although Harold has a good idea who is responsible, he isn't quite prepared for the events that follow.

Plot wise, The Long Good Friday is a lesson in under taxing the audience, simplicity in structure and forgoing thunder in the name of telling a solid story. The Long Good Friday is a British gangster picture that owes more to the Paul Muni and Edward G Robinson pictures from the golden age than something like "The Godfather". Where the characters are men of the street, working class villains who literally could be living around the corner from us, their respective antics giving them a reputation as infamous stars to be feared - and grudgingly admired.

What many modern day film lovers may not be aware of is that "The Long Good Friday" had its release delayed, held back a year as Margaret Thatcher and her merry men frothed at the mouth due to the film's portrayal of the Irish Rebublican Army. This was at a time when the Irish troubles were reaching new and terrifying heights, and here in this film, the government sensed a fall out that could have sent wrong message shock waves across the British Isles. This is one of the chief reasons that lifts the pic high above many of its contemporaries, it may be a simple story, but it's not merely about two gangs striving for power on one manor!.

Barrie Keeffe's script positively bristles with a hard bastard edge, some of the set pieces play out as true Brirtish greats, once viewed they are not to be forgotten. Some of the dialogue has an air of timeless bravado about it, delivered with cockney brashness from Bob Hoskins' Harold Shand. Hoskins is on fire, seemingly revelling in the role and fusing menace with a genuine sense of earthiness, one moment Harold is the bloke you want to have a pint of beer with, the next he's one step from rage induced retribution. Helen Mirren is fabulous as Harold's wife, Victoria, loyal and unerringly calm in the face of the madness unfolding, while the supporting cast are also highly effective, with a cameo from Pierce Brosnan that is icy cold in making a point.

Perhaps now it feels like it's only of its time, and it may well be that it's only British viewers of a certain age that can readily embrace the all encompassing thread of gangland London at risk from insurgents? But I will be damned should I ever choose to love this film less with each passing year, for to me it only just stops shy of being a British masterpiece, bristling with realism at a troubled time, and cheesing off Margaret Thatcher in the process, hell it works for me, always. 9/10

"Harold" (Bob Hoskins) has spent the last ten years building up a business of the back off criminal enterprises and is about to try to go straight with an hude dockside development he hopes to sell on to some Americans. They've arrived in London and he is all set to wine and dine them to seal the deal when things start going quite spectacularly wrong. His best pal "Colin" (Paul Freeman) is killed after seeking a quickie in the local swimming baths and one of his pubs suffers from what they conveniently describe as a "gas leak". He knows that someone is trying to queer his pitch, and that probably points to an insider. Girlfriend "Victoria" (Helen Mirren)? Ambitious sidekick "Jeff" (Derek Thompson) or maybe enforcer "Harris" (Bryan Marshall)? Well "Harold" has to mobilise his entire organisation if he's to salvage what he's got already let alone do any kind of deal with his already sceptical potential business partners. I don't think you could ever describe Hoskins as a versatile actor, but here he carries off the role as the increasingly bewildered gangster with skill and director John Mackenzie keeps the pace moving along well as we all try to guess just who's trying to bring his empire crashing down. Mirren isn't really on screen often enough to make much difference, but eagle-eyed folks might spot Pierce Brosnan and Karl Howman making up the numbers as the Irish continent who appear to be more complicit in the shenanigans. It hasn't aged terribly well but is still a solid drama with plenty of threat and thankfully, precisely no romance at all!