The two very good reasons to see (or re-watch) ‘The Long Good Friday‘ (1980) are Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren. The two actors play the two main roles, and these roles seem to be their first consistent roles in feature films, starting points in two formidable careers. The director is John Mackenzie, and for his filmography ‘The Long Good Friday‘ is one of the best films. In British cinema, the mob movies genre has few significant achievements to match the most popular films of the genre in the United States or France. ‘The Long Good Friday‘ is one of them and it is also a film that stands the test of time.
‘The Long Good Friday‘ is the biography of an imaginary gangster, which could very well be a synthesis of many real characters from the history of the London underworld of the 60s and 70s. Harold is a post-war street kid who has chosen the path of crime, worked his way to the top of the pyramid and reached the stage where he wants to turn his businesses into legal enterprises and himself into a respectable businessman. He is looking for business partners overseas, probably also among the heads of the American Mafia, to invest in the London of the future, which is to become a European center of attraction in the decade of momentum after Great Britain’s accession to the EU. Beside him is Victoria, his beautiful partner – of many years – in life and in crime. The two make up a couple of ‘nouveaux riches’ who lead a life of luxury and kitsch surrounded by a circle of loyal people who are held together by corruption and fear rather than friendship. Harold throws lavish parties, eats at the best restaurants, gives patriotic speeches with inflated words delivered in a slum accent, but he can’t leave behind the violence that got him where he is. Ultimately, it’s the only way he knows in order to survive and succeed. The story takes place during two days of the Holy Week. The empire that the aspiring businessman gangster is about to build is threatened by a series of mysterious murders and explosions that resemble terrorist attacks by the I.R.A. Harold had nothing to do with the Anglo-Irish conflict that was raging at the time, so who is behind them?
Playwright Barrie Keeffe‘s excellent original screenplay makes us, the audience, part of Harold’s investigations. In fact, from our armchairs, we only know a little more than the hero of the film about what happens on the screen. The lives of the hero evolve from the self-confidence of the gangster who feels invincible and the grandiosity of the man who seems to want to be the master not only of underground London but also of the City on surface, passing through the insecurity and anger caused by the attacks whose cause he fails to figure it out at first, with the violence rampaging towards an ending that is too anthology to rob you of the pleasure of finding it out for yourselves if you haven’t already seen the film. Helen Mirren adds a lot of nuance and substance to a role that might not have gone beyond the simplistic pretty girl next to the violent gangster. We also see Pierce Brosnan on screen for the first time in a feature film role, and although he appears in only a few scenes without speaking a line, his presence was impressive enough to launch his career.
“The Long Good Friday” is an excellent mob movie, but it is much more than that. Plans similar to those of Harold in the film would become reality in the development of the Docklands – Canary Wharf area, which in the coming decades would become a new financial and business center of London. The Good Friday in the film’s title will be the date when, towards the end of the millennium, the agreement that ended the violent era of the Anglo-Irish conflict the impact of which is felt in the film will be signed. Two prophecies that seem to have been fulfilled.