The Long Good Friday

We've been on a bit of a binge lately watching older movies, some we've already seen, some unknown to us until recently (like Army of Shadows).  Among the ones we'd already seen were a couple of Paul Newman films; Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, which seemed kind of flat - I've no desire to see it again, and The Verdict (which we'd not seen since it was released in the early 80s), which was outstanding, much better than I remembered.  Others in the never seen before category were The Day of the Jackal, a terrific thriller, and the film we watched last night, The Long Good Friday, released in 1981.

This was the film that made Bob Hoskins a star and it also features Helen Mirren, which is always a good thing.  Until I did a little research after viewing, I hadn't realized the love the critics had for it at the time.  Here's an excerpt from Roger Ebert's review, after he'd called it a "masterful and very tough piece of filmmaking":

And I have rarely seen a movie character so completely alive. Shand is an evil, cruel, sadistic man. But he's a mass of contradictions, and there are times when we understand him so completely we almost feel affectionate. He's such a character, such an overcompensating Cockney, sensitive to the slightest affront, able to strike fear in the hearts of killers, but a pushover when his mistress raises her voice to him. Shand is played by a compact, muscular actor named Bob Hoskins, in the most-praised film performance of the year from England. Hoskins has the energy and the freshness of a younger Michael Caine, if not the good looks, of course. 

This movie is one amazing piece of work, not only for the Hoskins performance but also for the energy of the filmmaking, the power of the music, and, oddly enough, for the engaging quality of its sometimes very violent sense of humor.

Hoskins plays a mobster who controls much of the London underworld and is attempting to go legit with a large property development in the dockyards of East London.  He's hosting a senior Mafia guy from the U.S. who can provide the key financing, but things start to go awry with bombings and murders.

A fascinating aspect for me was the conflict between "traditional" gangsters like Shand and political gangsters like the IRA about which the film revolves.

And, in his first film role, an incredibly youthful looking Pierce Brosnan appears briefly in two scenes that you won't forget, and the last scene will stay with you for a long time.