The Long Good Friday

John Mackenzie, UK 1980, 105 mins

The Long Good Friday remains one of the best B-movie London gangster flicks available to us today. John Mackenzie's London gangland flick remains a masterclass in what seems to now be a sadly defunct genre, and as such it should be treasured and acclaimed as the masterpiece it is.

Hoskins plays Harold, a gangland boss for whom things are going well. Money is coming in, deals are being set up and life is tasty-sweet. He has the local council on his side, prepared to back his dockland development as a front for American investors. However, things (as they say in the movies) are about to go horribly wrong. Bombs start appearing everywhere, assassinations are narrowly avoided and those behind the deeds even try to kill Harold's mother. As the bombs appear everywhere and Harold's world his business deals, slowly begin to fall apart.

This being Bob Hoskins means we are, of course, treated to the very early examples of Bob going red, blowing his top and generally turning psycho. All I need to say is that Harold's efforts to find the bombers involve large-scale kidnapping and large meathooks. Besides the archetypal Hoskins performance though we are treated to Helen Mirren at her best. Proving there was a life before Prime Suspect, Mirren plays Harold's girlfriend who realises that the only thing destroying Harold is himself. Besides stunning performances from these two, watch out for a pre-Goldeneye Pierce Brosnan giving a performance which makes you wonder why he was not given the Bond role earlier.

Besides the joy of watching the emergent Hoskins, the real sparkle of the film comes from Mackenzie's dynamite direction. Every reviewer cringes at invoking the clichés gritty, real, etc. but in this case they are unavoidable. This is one of the films that spawned countless imitators, and which warranted the use of such clichés because such terms are not a cop-out but merely the only way to truly describe what we are seeing in front of us. This is the original London gangster flick, perhaps not by virtue of age, but certainly by virtue of excellence. The Long Good Friday gives us a jaw dropping combination of acting presence and insightful direction. Many others followed in its wake but as noted this film was the original: the original and best.

Andrew Hesketh
EUFS Programme 1998-99