The Gist:
London, 1979. Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) is living a life of luxury; making property deals left and right, entertaining guests on his yacht and, with the help of his wife Victoria (Helen Mirren), making inroads with American “businesses”. He’s also the head of a city-wide criminal organisation, but one that has seen only peace for the past 10 years. When bombs and bodies mysteriously start piling up against Harold, he has 24 hours to set it straight before his best chance of a purely legitimate business disappears for good.
The Review:
If I’m going to label this 35th anniversary Blu-ray of The Long Good Friday with any adjective, it’s going to be sharp. That’s not just me gloating about re-watching it on a nearby 4k television set the size of a modest student flat, or that this newly-released Blu-ray has been so painstakingly re-mastered that the feature itself starts with an in-detail text explanation of just how much has been restored for its HD digital medium, it’s because The Long Good Friday is a damn sharp film in its own right.
It’s clear after watching The Long Good Friday how much of its DNA is in every subsequent British gangster film, it might as well be called ‘How Guy Ritchie Remembers the Late 1970s’, and how much of a debt is owed to its unflinching portrayal of how organised crime tries to dress itself. The film starts out so innocent and clean but gradually unwinds into a montage of cussing, fussing and bloody feuding, showing how easily the facade of civility falls when pressured. That or maybe it’s just Bob Hoskins.
Yes, this is very much Hoskins’ film (it was his breakout role after all) but deservedly so, the journey from politicking with big-wigs on a boat to broken bottles, machete-threats, torture and carsplosions isn’t an easy one to take alone, and yet Hoskins makes it look easy. Harold Shand is a man after Thatcher’s heart (maybe literally with a corkscrew if she’d personally messed up his manor); a creature of business and false propriety who’d throw any number of people under the bus if it got things moving, so long as it greased the wheels. And yet he’s a magnetic presence: London’s cheeriest thug who found himself on top and figured out how to stay there.
It could be said that if not for his confidants he might still just be another grunt, and for this we have to thank the ageless, peerless Helen Mirren. Mirren insisted with director John Mackenzie that her Victoria wasn’t “just another mob moll” and by flip it shows. She’s fully equipped with the class and delicacy that Hoskins’ Shand just plain doesn’t understand, but armed with just as much bite as needed. I guess that this is ‘default’ Helen Mirren, but it’s such a sight to see her acting off Hoskins that you don’t really mind so much.
Exemplary acting aside, the strangest thing about The Long Good Friday was just how spookily relevant it all feels. The collapse of urban centres to social decay, the terrors of radicalism and nationalist politics, the reliance on foreign business partnerships, the service of the self over society; they may all sound awfully vague, constant dangers but they oscillate in a way that seems to echo our own, contemporary ones. Can it be that despite all that we’ve accomplished in the last 35 years that we’re right back to where we were? Only this time we don’t have Bob to act as our emotional cipher.
For all it’s grandstanding on the issues of the day, The Long Good Friday is ultimately just a 70’s gangster film and in pigeonholing itself with such genre conventions comes across as a bit simple and insensitive at times. Then again, ‘The Godfather’ was just a 70’s gangster film and people keep calling that the best film ever made over and over again for some reason. I’m not saying it’s a British answer to ‘The Godfather’ as The Long Good Friday comes with a much more cynical, spectacularly-British sneer, sense of identity and pulsing synth soundtrack. Now that I’ve said that, though, I’m finding it hard to come up with another comparison.
The Verdict:
If Francis Ford Coppola was from South London, grew up alongside the threat of the IRA, faced down the barrel of Thatcherism and wanted to make a lean film about organised crime that wasn’t the ones he’d ultimately make, then I guess he’d come up with something like this. If you like your crime organised, allegorical and more Cockney than a cloning accident on the set of EastEnders, you can do no better.
The Long Good Friday is re-released in cinemas on 19th June 2015.
Special Features
6-DISC SPECIAL EDITION BOX SET CONTENTS:
- High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray and Standard Definition DVD presentation of both films, in brand new restorations sourced from the original camera negatives and approved by cinematographer Phil Meheux (The Long Good Friday), director Neil Jordan and cinematographer Roger Pratt (Mona Lisa)
- Original uncompressed PCM mono 1.0 sound
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY DISCS 1 & 2 – BLU-RAY & DVD
- Audio commentary by director John Mackenzie
- Bloody Business, a documentary about the making of The Long Good Friday, including interviews with John Mackenzie, stars Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, producer Barry Hanson and Phil Meheux
- Brand new interviews with Barry Hanson, Phil Méheux and writer Barrie Keeffe
- Hands Across the Ocean – A comparison of the differences between the UK and US soundtracks
- Original Trailer
THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY DISCS 3 & 4 – BLU-RAY & DVD [LIMITED EDITION EXCLUSIVE]
- Q&A with Bob Hoskins and John Mackenzie, moderated by Richard Jobson
- Apaches (1977), John Mackenzie’s notorious farm safety film, presented in High Definition (1080p) for the first time
- Introduction to Apaches by cinematographer Phil Meheux
- Extended interviews with Barry Hanson, Phil Méheux, Barrie Keeffe, assistant director Simon Hinkly and assistant art director Carlotta Barrow
MONA LISA DISCS 5 & 6 – BLU-RAY & DVD
- Audio commentary by Bob Hoskins and Neil Jordan
- Brand new interviews with director Neil Jordan, writer David Leland and producer Stephen Woolley
- Original Trailer
100-PAGE HARD BACK BOOK [LIMITED EDITION EXCLUSIVE]
- Featuring new writing on the film by critics Mark Duguid and Mike Sutton plus archive pieces by Robert Sellers and Patrick Russell, illustrated with original production stills
Certificate: 18
Director: Neil Jordan
Starring: Bob Hoskins
Running Time: 114 minutes
DVD Release Date: 4th May 2015
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