The Long Good Friday

B+

Directed by John Mackenzie

A long forgotten classic of the English crime drama genre, "The Long Good Friday" is an exciting, if slightly dated, thriller that benefits from remarkable performances by Bob Hoskins (you know, the guy from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit"!) and Helen "I need no introduction in the form of a snide comment" Mirren.

Hoskins stars as Harold Shand, a London gangster trying to legitimize his business by giving up the vice market and investing in a large scale urban renewal project with co-financing from a New Jersey mafioso. Shand's plans, however, quickly begin to unravel on Good Friday (thus, the name) when his mother's chauffeur is killed in a bomb attack, one of his restaurants is blown up shortly before he arrives there to dine and his best friend and associate Colin is slain in a London bath house. Shand, convinced that rival gangs are out to thwart his business plan goes about finding who is responsible for the fracas, leading him to an unlikely culprit.

"The Long Good Friday" works on many levels, first and foremost as a gripping crime drama but also as a careful character study of a man trying to walk the straight and narrow but being undone by his own failings. I've always felt that the brevity of feature length gilms make meaningful and deep character studies difficult, if not impossible, but Mackenzie is succesful in painting a fairly complex psychological portrait of Shand. Indeed, Shand is first shown to us as an effervescent, good natured mobster who genuinely appears to be done with his life of crime and ready to embrace the straight and narrow (albeit the lucrative straight and narrow). As things begin to come undone, however, Shand slowly reverts to his old, criminal self and his self control starts to erode. The effort to build a complex and nuanced character out of Shand probably would have been wasted had it not been for Hoskins who does a fantastic job, succesfully embodying the type of tenous control Shand obviously has on his own actions. Hoskins infuses Shand with a brazeness and danger that is reminiscent of Ben Kingsley in "Sexy Beast" except with a great deal more nuance and thespian restraint. Mirren, who plays Hoskins classy moll, is excellent as well but that comes as little surprise considering her track record of excellence.
"The Long Good Friday" was released in 1980 and the film defintely bears the imprint of that particular era, which is both a good and a bad thing. On the one hand, the film is effortlessly authentic in its portrayal of this specific time period but it is also marked by some unfortunate trends of 80's films such as the use of cheezy, heavy synth music during poignant moments for increased effect. In one particularly egregious scene, Shand takes a slow motion shower after murdering one of his associates while the synth wails on, letting the viewer know that this scene means business. I'll forgive these transgressions simply because such unholy matches of bad music and slow, overly dramatic cinematography were par for the course back in the day.

Despite the cheezy synth music, "The Long Good Friday" is an entertaining and captivating crime drama that should be required viewing for all fans of the genre.