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Rating:  -
I appreciate this movie, a good script, a great story, well acting but the language....wow, very difficult to understand the subtility. Too hard for me
Rating:  -
Pierce Brosnan is a young bit player in this film as an IRA hit-man.
The bombs start going off in London and the bodies start piling up
in what at first appears to be a MOB turf war,
but is actually a delivery gone bad?
The acting is first rate here and we believe the London MOB with manners that we see. Soon after this era they started putting up cameras on all the London street corners. But the bobbies can still be bought?
Labor in London is Irish in construction
and the paths cross in a very strange way.
Rating: -
Before this movie was released, with the exception of Michael Caine`s Get Carter, British gangster movies were little known around the world and even at home, they were little appreciated. With Harold Shand, a brash, rough pint sized gangster on the make, Bob Hoskins changed that and paved the way for a whole raft of gritty crime thrillers set in the British Isles. Although few of the later movies rose to the heights claimed by Caine and Hoskins.
Harold Shand is a London gangster from the old school, he is the man that the real life Kray twins might like to have been, bursting with ruthlessness, animal cunning, aggression, hubris, charisma and ambition he sets out to transform himself into a businessman cum developer who will succeed because the qualities that make him a good gangster will allow him to defeat any legitimate business rival. He is assisted by his girl Victoria (Helen Mirren) - several grades above the classic Barbera Windsor style of gangster`s moll - who understands her man`s strengths and weaknesses and gives him the support and guidance that he needs succeed without threatening his perceived alpha male dominance.
Shand`s big idea is to get in on the development on London`s docklands and to cash in on an upcoming bid to host the Olympic games. He turns to an American crime syndicate for backing and the movie is set on an Easter weekend when he is playing host to mobster Charlie (Eddie Constantine) and Tony (Stephen Davies), Charlie`s lawyer.
Harold`s plans start to come unstuck as his organization quakes under attack from an unknown enemy who is planting bombs and assassinating Harold`s men. Victoria, assisted by Harold`s right hand man Jeff (Derek Thompson), attempts to keep the Americans on-board while Harold must find out who is behind the attacks and deal with them. He finally works out what is going on but can his gangster instincts deal with an entirely new threat?
Hoskins and Mirren are outstanding. They are an unlikely couple but they will have you convinced. Great acting from them both is helped by a script that gives them plenty to work with. Unfortunately, the two of them do a fine job of highlighting just how poor is the rest of the acting. Jeff has betrayed Harold but he hardly gives a hint as to what his motives might have been and all of the other characters seem to be determined to deliver their lines and collect their money and that`s it.
The uninspiring supporting actors do not detract though. The script and the editing deliver a tight package that it always moving along and holding your attention. The camera work is good too - you are there in Harold`s London and not just in a studio with a few street scene backdrops.
If you like this film then you will want to catch "Mona Lisa" in which Hoskins gets quite close to the Shand character. All of the subsequent Brit-gangster movies will entertain you but never reach the same level. For that, you should perhaps try "Trainspotting" but not if you found Hoskins` accent difficult!
Rating: -
The Long Good Friday, considered one of the best British gangster flicks, takes the classic story of hubristic downfall and sets it in late-seventies London. Bob Hoskins plays Harold Shand, a gangland kingpin trying to "go legit" by investing in some shorefront property which will one day host the Olympics. After a trip across the Atlantic to meet with his American gangster counterparts, he brings them back to East London where he hopes to convince them to invest with him in the shorefront property.
That's when things go wrong: his henchmen start dying and his local haunts get blown up, raising doubt in the Americans about the security of their potential investment. Harold Shand, in an interesting twist, turns from gangster to detective, and ruthlessly investigates all his known associates. Some unforgettable ultra-violence ensues, as he hangs his suspects on meat hooks, stabs his right-hand man in the throat with a broken Scotch bottle, and eventually discovers that it's all been a misunderstanding. But it's too late, and he's in over his head, against the law and against none other than the IRA. Drunk on power and a thirst for revenge, Harold Shand's arrogance finally proves to be his Achilles heel.
What's not to like about a gangster flick with a plot like this? It's also got a classic moll played by Helen Mirren, and a host of other actors who would later go on to become stars in their own right, most notably Pierce Brosnan in a non-speaking role as an IRA hitman. But the problem with The Long Good Friday is that it completely lacks style.
You can fault modern gangster movies for gratuitous stylized flourishes - most notably Ritchie's overwrought attempts - but here you have a movie that is completely lacking in any style at all. The lighting, the camerawork, and most annoyingly, an atrocious eighties synthesizer soundtrack, seem like they came straight out of an uninspired television movie. What saves The Long Good Friday are two things: Bob Hoskins' excellent incarnation of a pugnacious and racist gangster boss, saving every scene he is in, no matter how blandly directed. The other thing that saves this movie has to do with a fortuitous premonition.
This was made at the very beginning of the eighties when Margaret Thatcher came into power, ushering in, along with Reagan, the philosophy of unfettered free market liberalism. Harold Shand repeatedly refers to his gang as "The Corporation", and it's easy to see him as one step removed from a ruthless CEO in a legitimate corporation. Add to this the specter of terrorism, and you have a movie which resonates with anybody witnessing the 21st century. This universal quality, and some stand-out scenes make this a must-see gangster movie; but, in terms of quality filmmaking, it is nowhere near the best of the genre.
Any gangster movie will inevitably be compared to classics like Mean Streets and The Godfather, two classics from early 70s American cinema. Or perhaps British contenders from around the same time like Get Carter (which has a great soundtrack, by the way). The Long Good Friday can't hold a blowtorch to any of these. Even in terms of trashy appeal, DePalma's Scarface trounces The Long Good Friday. I could go on for days trying to pinpoint the exact point at which trashiness becomes aesthetically appealing, but I wouldn't be able to prove anything. It's just an intuition I have, which doesn't really have any logic to back it up. I can just say that close to 30 years after this movie was made, it looks and feels dated -- but it's still worth a watch, if not for Bob Hoskins' performance, than for what it portends.
Rating:  -
The best thing about this film is the soundtrack. 79 Euro disco and hypnotic psyche prog rock. I give the sounds track 5 stars.
The movie itself. Not so good. Unless you like boring. none of the characters are sympathetic or fascinating. theres a lot of dead air where nothings is going on. the violence is sudden sadistic and revolting, and very rare. theres not much sense of impending doom or walls closing in. theres an obvious shakespear influence - but its no where close to that kind of quality. then tried to prop it up.
the lead gangsters rant against americans at the end seems sudden and not really fitting with the theme of the film. there is a xenophobic undertone to the film - the bad guys are black, irish, or american.
this one doesnt seem up to criterion quality. more like they licensed cheap back catalog. I could barely stay awake. My GF fell asleep in the first 20min. I held on hoping it was building to something... not really.
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