It’s still the best gangster film of the post- Godfather era. Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren are a striking couple at the top of London’s crime scene; Hoskins’ Cockney fireball Harold Shand is about to transform his crooked lifestyle with Mafia money and a land development scheme. Becoming the Posh Prince of the City has one hitch — unknown insurgents are firing up a turf war unheard of in England. Hailed as one of England’s best movies ever, John Mackenzie and Barrie Keefe’s tale is woven around the Easter holiday, with disturbing parallels to The Passion.

The Long Good Friday 4K
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 26
1979 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 114 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date September 17, 2024 / 49.95
Starring: Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren, Dave King, Eddie Constantine, Paul Freeman, Bryan Marshall, Derek Thompson, P.H. Moriarty, Pierce Brosnan.
Cinematography: Phil Méheux
Art Director: Vic Symonds
Film Editor: Mike Taylor
Costume Design: Tudor George
Original Music: Francis Monkman
Screenplay Written by Barrie Keeffe
Executive Producers George Harrison, Denis O’Brien
Produced by Barry Hanson
Directed by John Mackenzie

Is the real subject gangsters in London,
or Margaret Thatcher’s ‘economic miracle?’
If you’ve been resisting British crime pictures, this is the one that will make you a genre believer, especially with Criterion’s dazzling new 4K Ultra HD presentation. We Americans who saw The Long Good Friday in 1982 learned that the gangster epic was alive and well, that there was life beyond the  Godfather saga. The tale of the Corleones was a period picture, but this mob boss Harold Shand is a Cockney original with a free pass into the urban development racket. Director John Mackenzie’s film captures the vibe of London in the late 1970s, where pro-business greed is rebuilding and gentrifying the city with mob money. The film has a tour-de-force performance from the great Bob Hoskins, and another just as striking from the marvelous Helen Mirren. Her loyal wife abets gangster Shand’s bid to legitimize his illegal rackets.

 

The BFI lists The Long Good Friday as one of the all-time top British films, and as a gangster thriller it equals the American classics of the 1930s. It’s connected to England’s conservative Thatcher years in the same way the Hollywood greats were connected to Prohibition. The tightly constructed Barrie Keeffe screenplay introduces a disturbing new conflict as Shand’s mob squares off against an unprecedented enemy.

The story begins with gun violence in Ireland that will soon come to roost in the heart of London. Mob boss Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) rules from his posh penthouse and a yacht docked on the Thames. He controls restaurants, pubs, casinos and even bathhouses with an army of henchmen and coordinated assists from local authorities. Old cronies Councilman Harris and detective Parky (Bryan Marshall & Dave King) grease the wheels at city hall for Harold’s proposal to develop a disused river wharf into a major entertainment and hotel complex for the upcoming Olympics. Harold’s right-hand men Colin (Paul Freeman) and Jeff (Derek Thompson) arrange to wine and dine visiting American Mafia investor Charlie (Eddie Constantine of  Alphaville). Harold has a sterling asset in his wife Victoria (Helen Mirren), a charming hostess who lends him a much-needed touch of class.

 

Harold’s PR sales job goes great until Good Friday, when one of his top associates is murdered and bombs start going off in Harold’s clubs. Harold fumes, rages and threatens to tear his own organization apart to find out who’s hitting him; in reality, he hasn’t the faintest notion what’s really going on.

Made in 1979 but held up for release until 1981 because of its political content, The Long Good Friday crackles with excitement and tension. Much of it comes from Bob Hoskins’ ferocious bantam Harold Shand. Harold has no sooner returned from America than his top pal is knifed in a pool-spa. His best dinner pub is blown to bits seconds before he’s to arrive with his American investor. While Victoria puts on a good front, Harold dashes back and forth across London, throwing his weight around. His criminal empire is under attack, but by whom?  His last viable opposition was wiped out ten years ago. Refusing to listen to reason, Harold wades into his own organization, looking for the responsible party.

 

The Long Good Friday doesn’t so much conjure an atmosphere as create an entire world. Harold stands framed before the Tower Bridge, offering himself as a symbol of the future of England, a once- proud empire now reduced to a mere ‘investment opportunity.’ The big development deal would make Harold 100% legit, leaving behind a lifetime of gang struggle. Liberal critics surely seized on this image because it harmonizes with Margaret Thatcher’s shutdown of ‘socialist’ England and her granting of a Free Pass for capitalist opportunists. The timing is perfect: the run-down, empty docks behind Harold’s yacht will soon be transformed into glitzy new developments as public land is leveraged for private profit. Harold could be a new Prince of the City — but his hoodlum past suddenly catches up with him.

The film has some unforgettable set pieces. Harold puts the fear of God into his troops by hanging some of them from their heels in a slaughterhouse — a whole row of hoods dangling like frozen meat. When violence breaks out, it’s always unpredictable, like shotgun murders at a stock car racing track. Harold’s volcanic temper explodes when things don’t go his way. Wife Victoria and best pal Jeff must physically restrain him from going berserk.

The movie’s dialogue contains a lot of Cockney dialect, colorful phrases bandied about without explanation. In America, Embassy Pictures added a short text glossary of words before the film. “Manor” = turf, “Bottle” = nerve, and “To grass” = to inform. The language is fascinating — it’s like listening to a foreign tongue one can understand. We aren’t meant to get a handle on what’s going on in the first few scenes, before Harold Shand’s arrival on the supersonic Concorde clicks the movie into clarity.

 

All the acting definitely clicks, with Helen Mirren a standout. Not at all a trophy wife, Victoria Shand demonstrates as much nerve as Harold, and is far cooler under pressure. Paul Freeman (Raiders of the Lost Ark) is solid in a brief role as a gay gangster lieutenant. Eddie Constantine is fine as the Yank investor, except that after living in France for 34 years, singing and acting in French, he no longer sounds like an American. An actor named P.H. Moriarty is surprisingly effective as a henchman with a wicked scar on his face. And none other than Pierce Brosnan is in for two short but memorable bits as a hit man.

“It’s like a bad night in Belfast!”
The Long Good Friday takes place over an Easter weekend, and some of its ghastly events correspond to the Catholic stations of the cross. One character is accused of being a Judas and another is literally crucified. The big thematic twist comes when Harold finally discovers what ‘gang’ is tearing up his empire. He thinks he can buy them off or learn their secrets and wipe them out, an approach that proves a big mistake. In this new arena his gangster methods are useless.

This character weakness echoes other movies about heroes who find themselves out of their depth. In Billy Wilder’s   The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes the master detective of deduction is no match for a ruthless modern femme fatale. In the Robert Aldrich / A.I. Bezzerides  Kiss Me Deadly, tough guy Mike Hammer’s macho posing is made irrelevant by an all-negating nuclear secret. The arrogant Harold Shand is a King of Crime, but he can’t imagine a new enemy that fights for ideals, not money. They can’t be bought off.

 

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The Criterion Collection’s 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray of The Long Good Friday 4K is the best-looking presentation by far of this uncompromised crime epic. Director of photography Phil Méheux approved the final color. The image is rich and detailed, never clammy or cold as in some older transfers. Ms. Mirren is a vision in her close-ups. Francis Monkman’s grinding, insistent music score puts a sharp edge on the proceedings, especially when Harold Shand arrives on the supersonic Concorde.

In addition to the 4K UHD disc are two Blu-rays, one with the feature and one with the extras.

Director Mackenzie’s 2002 audio commentary is here, plus other extras from later disc presentations. The long-form making-of docu Bloody Business from the old Anchor Bay 2006 DVD is one of disc producer Perry Martin’s best efforts. It has interviews with all of the film’s main players — director John Mackenzie, writer Keeffe, the producer Barry Hanson and actors Hoskins, Mirren and Pierce Brosnan. The show was almost shelved: ITC reportedly backed out over fears of I.R.A. reprisals, and the movie languished until George Harrison’s Handmade Films stepped in to make it a surprise hit. Newer interviews are from a 2016 Arrow disc, along with Hands Across the Water, a featurette with comparisons of scenes that were re-voiced for America, to replace Cockney terms like ‘nicked’ and ‘glass house.’

Quite wonderful is An Accidental Studio, a feature-length docu on the happy history of Handmade Films, which comes across as an ode to the integrity and fair-mindedness of the much-missed George Harrison. Handmade seems able to do no wrong until its financial expert decides to impose his taste on productions.

The advertising materials for The Long Good Friday were never very good, but Eric Skillman’s new art is excellent. The new disc carries over the spine number #26 from Criterion’s old DVD — from 1998.

The Long Good Friday brings back gangster thrills not seen since the heyday of  Little Caesar and  The Public Enemy … but it also blends in with postwar Italian crime epics that analyzed the roots of urban corruption. Back in 2006, Criterion released a DVD of Francesco Rosi’s  Hands Over the City, aka Le mani sulla cittá. It’s a dry but fascinating look at political conspiracy to squeeze private profit out of the public redevelopment of Naples.

Mackenzie and Keefe’s movie also makes us think of London’s old Thames waterfront around Tower Bridge that once was a thriving port, as seen in Basil Dearden’s fascinating  Pool of London. When larger container ships could no longer reach ‘The Pool,’ all those docks and cranes sat idle. Redevelopment reclaimed the area as prime real estate — much of it for private use by the wealthy.

More than one Criterion commentator mentions Harold Shand’s boast that London is well on its way to becoming the undisputed Capital of a new united Europe. After the Brexit debacle, isolating England as a fiefdom for the benefit of privileged interests, maybe it would have been better if Harold Shand’s development scam had succeeded.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

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The Long Good Friday 4K
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Audio commentary with John Mackenzie
An Accidental Studio (2019), a documentary about the early years of Handmade Films
Introduction by Criterion Collection curatorial director Ashley Clark
Making of Docu with interviews with Mackenzie, Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren
Interviews with Méheux and screenwriter Barrie Keeffe
U.K. and U.S. soundtrack comparison
Trailers
Insert folder with an essay by Ryan Gilbey.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One 4K Ultra HD disc + one Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: September 19, 2024
(7193good)

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