Usamah Harvey
The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.
Lucia Ayala
It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
Abegail Noëlle
While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.
lucianscombe
I have watched this film many, many times and yet it never fails to grip me.It quite simply is one of the finest British films of its genre. It is dark, gritty, witty and beautifully cast.For me the pivotal scene is the ending - sheer brilliance by the late, great Bob Hoskins. He captures Harold Shane's emotions perfectly without a single word. That 60 second scene is perfection!
SnoopyStyle
Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) is a successful London gangster aspiring to be a legitimate owner of the abandoned Docklands for a casino and other developments with American mafia money. Victoria (Helen Mirren) is his smarter better half. While he sips champagne with corrupt cops and American mobster Charlie, IRA hit-man (Pierce Brosnan) is killing his right hand man. His other guy Eric is blown up in a car bomb outside of church on Good Friday. Harold tries to uncover the cause and finds that a minor deal unknown to him connected to IRA had gone terribly wrong. The IRA holds Harold personally responsible.This is a great staring performance from Bob Hoskins. He infuses this movie with great energy. Without him, the movie does struggle a little. The plot doesn't have much tension. It also has a great young Pierce Brosnan prominently as a nameless IRA hit-man.
rooee
A year on from his way-too-early death, let's revel in Bob Hoskins' magnetic on-screen presence. His ability to switch in an instant from avuncular charm to rabid menace perfectly suits his role as Harold Shand, mob boss on London's unlovely river. The final shot – surely referenced by George Clooney at the end of Michael Clayton – is as skillful a piece of wordless acting as you'll ever see.The film opens with a series of violent killings. In a clever bit of framing, we gradually learn that the victims are Harold's goons, so we share the shock and horror he feels. Turns out that the killings couldn't have come at a worse time – the New Jersey mob is in town to sign a business deal to form a "New London". So Harold, along with his bird Vicky (Helen Mirren) and best china plate Jeff (Derek Thompson) must track down and quash the jealous culprits before the Americans turn on their heels without signing on the dotted line.It's a propulsive plot, simple until the twists start piling up. Mostly this is a character-centric play, focusing on the love triangle between Harold, Vicky, and Jeff. Vicky is the intelligent centre around which all the fellas gravitate, while Jeff is the gentle calm who shares the centre of that storm. But Jeff isn't the picture of laid-back submission he first seems. Watch his face as those lift doors slide closed – is that a glimpse of an evil smile? The Long Good Friday is fascinatingly dated. Francis Monkman's music is a strange concoction of flute-based crime soul and Phaedra-period Tangerine Dream looping electronica. But beyond that, this is a movie locked in time: the 1980 London skyline shown at the start is from a grey English era, Thatcher's long shadow looming. When Harold makes his speech to the Americans about Britain being great again, the blank stares he receives speak volumes. His desperation to rekindle his land of hope and glory is impossibly sad.Yet Good Friday is frequently leavened with humour. Whether it's a pub named "Fagan's", or Harold exclaiming "Diabolical liberty!" as he hears of his henchman's murder, there's an ironic vein of deadpan running through the script. There's something very British about The Long Good Friday's resistance to glorifying its blinkered thugs, however much we end up empathising.Which we do. In a genre better acquainted with swagger than sympathy, Good Friday stands above the pack by getting behind the macho posturing and to the heart of the mob. It's not just his business interests that are being damaged – Harold is emotionally wounded by the attacks. Sure, he responds with machetes, but the point is the script delves into vulnerable places that lesser gangster movies wouldn't dare.It might not have the grim grit of the likes of Get Carter (although one particular death is genuinely shocking), but for me Good Friday's more self-deprecating tone gives it the edge, and a timelessness that elevates this made-for-TV-for-under-a-million movie to classic status. It's the anti-operatic alternative to the glossy Godfathers and Goodfellas of this world, and an unshowy landmark in British crime cinema.
JoshuaDysart
'The Long Good Friday' is a perfectly dated late 70's/early 80's British Gangster flick staring Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren. Completed in 1979, but not released until 1980 (by George Harrison's company, no less), the film acts as a sort of bridge between the established violent grit cinema of the '70's and the coming slick synth aesthetic of the 80's.The movie is, mostly, perfectly balanced between classy, character driven, and wonderfully exploitive. When that balance does tip too far towards filmic excess it can sometimes take a good thing right up to the edge of self-parody. But ultimately this only serves to solidify the film's courage and amp up its spirit. Somehow the movie manages to become cooler in its few missteps than it would've been had it achieved perfection.A huge part of its elevation from "mildly inspiring" to "stupid awesome" are the performances at the heart of it. Bob Hoskins is virile, dangerous and genuinely alive. Helen Mirren is smart, collected and stunning. Their scenes together soar with such intense realism that they pull the more mundane thriller aspects of the piece up along with it. The two great actors are a rising tide for the whole endeavor.And to top it all off, the film now comes off as pretty prophetic regarding the gentrification of London and the arrival of the UK's role in New Europe, even as the UK struggled with their own militant troubles at home. This theme is perfectly capped when Hoskin's delivers a "Network"- style visionary speech about England emerging from the post-war dregs into the heightened capitalistic fervor of a new era at the end of the film. Along with the very last shot, it's a legendary piece of cinema.If the camera-work is sometimes pedestrian (it is) it's certainly saved by Francis Monkman's ridiculously cool, driving electronic jazz/funk score. The music screams - sometimes too loud - over the images, often drowning out all other sound until you're left with just the gleam of pure, stylish cinema, the kind that Michael Mann would soon after turn into the very look and feel of the '80's with 'Thief'.And if that's not enough to sell you on this great, great flick, it also features a baby-faced Pierce Brosnan in his first film role as a virtually mute hit-man.Such a good time.
