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Long Good Friday
- favourite film

The Long Good Friday was both commercially (albeit for Handmade Films who bought the rights from the original makers for less than the production costs) and critically successful, a brave venture starring a previously little known Bob Hoskins along with various other actors breaking into the film business including Pierce Brosnan, Paul Barber, Karl Howman and Dexter Fletcher. Helen Mirren was rather more established, but playing Victoria did her career no harm either.
What made the film different from other British gangster movies was the realistic sense of decline hanging over London and by extension Britain in the late 1970s : Hoskins as gangland boss Harold laments the lack of honour among thieves, the fading role of the church, and falling standards. His wish to go legit is in part driven by his need to rebuild something great on London’s decayed docklands, but his own life is symptomatic of the corruption eating away at finer values. And his eventual defeat by the IRA symbolises the political mess into which the country had by then drifted.
There are violent scenes not for the squeamish, but the image that stays with you is that of Harold’s final car ride, when in spite of his murderous criminality we empathise with him thanks to Hoskins’ powerful yet still human performance.

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