The Long Good Friday Reviews

I’m going to throw a word around that I don’t tend to do much: overrated. I think The Long Good Friday is an overrated British gangster film on the whole, but in the tiny details it does do some unique things and is blessed to have Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren as the leads. When the film begins to get cumbersome, Hoskins and Mirren are there to work tiny miracles and save it.

I think much of the blame for the more lumbering choices in the film land squarely on director John Mackenzie’s shoulders. His indifferent camera work is a problem, but so is the choice to pull focus from Hoskins and Mirren trying to go legit. When we focus in on the character portrait of Harold Shand, Hoskins in his big break role, the film soars, and where we lose interest in when we move away from him and into scenes showing the bombings and killings of his men. This would not normally be a problem if any of these men or these bombings were fully developed. However, these excursions away from the main action frequently interrupt and upset the more compulsive viewing of watching Shand be a smooth operator with the American Mafia or treat street kids tenderly. This man is a mess of contradictions, but these bombings and deaths are of various characters that have only the flimsiest of development before being dispatched. There is not much tension there. (Although the sight of a young Pierce Brosnan feeling his body under a shower-head in a local gym is incredibly attractive image that burnt itself into my brain.)

But we keep returning to Shand and his trophy wife (Mirren). Shand is a man that knows how to be a smooth operator, who rose to the top of the pack not because he’s a compact, muscular fireplug, but because he sees through it all and knows what to say, when to say, and to whom it must be said. And here he is, in an attempt to go legit, helplessly watching his empire crumble while desperately trying, in vain, to remain respectable and maintain the façade of upper-class mobility. He’s always far more interesting than the rest of the film ever threatens to become. Mirren, for her part, isn’t given much to do, but she’s beautiful, elegant, and her very presence here only reinforces the notion that Shand is but a pretender to this glamorous and well-groomed world that he so desires to be a part of. I just wonder what a director like, say, Neil Jordan could have done with this material in the end.

Since this movie is considered a classic, arguably the best British gangster flick ever made, I was really eager to check it out. To be honest, I had a rather hard time to get into the whole thing though. I mean, the first 10 minutes were almost impossible to follow and then the rest of the movie was still rather hard to decipher. I mean, even the characters had no clue about what was going on and it started to grow thin after a while. Of course, in the last 10-20 minutes, you finally find out what was going on and, in retrospective, it was actually rather obvious. So, in my opinion, even though the plot was entertaining, it wasn’t really amazing though. Still, it doesn’t mean it was a bad movie, far from it. Indeed, the directing was solid, the music was not bad (which is quite remarkable since you are dealing with a 80’s feature) and, of course, Bob Hoskins was downright impressive. Indeed, the little guy delivered one hell of a kinetic performance and it would give him his breakthrough. Helen Mirren was also pretty good but, even though she did fight to expand her character, I though her character was still rather limited. Anyway, to conclude, even if I don’t think it was great, it was still a really good flick and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

According to many, The Long Good Friday has been called the best British gangster film of all time as well as one of the best British films! Now after watching it, I am not surprised at all! Every single second was intense, dark and psychologically disturbing. I do have to say that it is a very underrated film that I feel should have earned more credit than it received (not so much the critics but the public worldwide). I do love these kinds of films where people are getting killed and there is a complex mystery going on in the aftermath of the incidents but with a revealed killer behind it all!


The Long Good Friday is set in modern day England and tells the story of Harold Shand, a successful London gangster whose world falls apart over the course of one weekend. Shand controls the London docks and is planning a big real estate deal, financed by money from the American mob and given the okay by the London organization. His world is sweet -- he lives in a fancy penthouse, he owns a yacht, and has a sensitive and intelligent mistress. But suddenly a bomb explodes inside his Rolls Royce, another bomb destroys a pub he owns, and a third is found inside his casino. Shand can't understand who would suddenly want him dead, particularly over the Easter weekend, when representatives from the American mafia are coming into town to discuss investing in Shand's real estate project. Bob Hoskins delivers a great performance in a genre that he works best in! Well, a lot better than Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Hook. Helen Mirren is now 65 years old but she was 35 years old in The Long Good Friday and bloody hell! She was stunning and so was her performance!


It was directed amazingly! I wouldn't be surprise if this film or any of the makers were inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy because I do think that The Long Good Friday was a lot like Frenzy but apart from Frenzy was a bit better. I think this as well as Frenzy was so realistic that it felt like a TV drama or soap opera. Plus, it was set in a very modern era of England (still very similar to what England looks like today). Also, like Frenzy, The Long Good Friday has a very powerful shocking ending. Different ending to Frenzy but still awesome!


Overall, The Long Good Friday is an absolutely awesome, intense and quite psychologically terrifying gangster film that I loved from start to finish and would call one of the greatest gangster films as well as one of the greatest of the Brits!