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the audience applauded

Nice effects though.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

I have watched this film many, many times and yet it never fails to grip me.It quite simply is one of the finest British films of its genre. It is dark, gritty, witty and beautifully cast.For me the pivotal scene is the ending - sheer brilliance by the late, great Bob Hoskins. He captures Harold Shane's emotions perfectly without a single word. That 60 second scene is perfection!

"The Long Good Friday" is a terrific gangster film, a fascinating character study and the movie that propelled Bob Hoskins into the big time. Its story about the downfall of a crime boss and the collapse of his empire is fast-moving, violent and tense and presents a sequence of events that seem totally unstoppable. The crime boss' inability to understand what's going on or to produce any kind of effective answer to the forces that threaten him, illustrate that he's a man whose time has passed and the solutions that he's always relied on simply don't work anymore.In the late 1970s, Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) is the top gangster who's proud that his ability to negotiate with other criminals in London has brought an unprecedented 10 years of peace to the capital. During this period, he's become wealthy and enjoys living in a posh penthouse and spending time on his luxurious yacht. With corrupt police officers and council officials on his payroll, he feels his position is unassailable but is still ambitious to achieve more. He wants to assume the appearance of being a legitimate businessman and with the help of money supplied by the American mafia, plans a major redevelopment of London's docklands. This exciting project has the potential to make him even richer but he also says that his motivation is to elevate the status of London within Europe.Harold and his mistress, Victoria (Helen Mirren), welcome a mafia boss called Charlie (Eddie Constantine) and a mob lawyer called Tony (Stephen Davies) to a reception on their yacht in the hope that they can persuade them to invest heavily in the proposed docklands project but during their visit, a series of killings and bombings result in the deaths of Harold's chauffeur and his right-hand-man, Colin (Paul Freeman). His Rolls Royce is destroyed by a bomb during an attempt on his mother's life, a pub he owns is extensively damaged by another bomb and a third undetonated bomb is discovered in his casino.Harold mobilises all the resources at his disposal and uses extreme violence and torture to try to find whoever's responsible for the attacks but is spectacularly unsuccessful in his search and also in concealing the seriousness of what's happening from his mafia guests. By the time he eventually understands who his enemies are and the reasons for their attacks, it's too late to save his empire.Bob Hoskins is astonishingly good at portraying his character's range of emotions and behaviours as he's convincingly vicious, cruel and sadistic on some occasions and then vulnerable, confused and pathetic on others. Harold is a deluded man who believes that he can achieve respectability and remain a violent thug at the same time and his poor judgement also leads him to underestimate both his enemies and his mafia guests. Hoskins achieves something significant by making Harold's actions seem understandable and in the final sequence of the movie, the range of thoughts and feelings he shows in a short period of reflection are also extremely powerful. Helen Mirren is classy as Victoria and a strong supporting cast add considerable colour and realism to this tough and very memorable crime drama.

What with continuous development in filming technology, equipment and techniques, a film made almost 34 years ago is almost bound to suffer from comparison with modern productions, so it has to rely on it narrative strengths and its acting. Certainly, modern filmgoers might complain that the direction in The Long Good Friday is a little static, and what camera movement there is doesn't necessarily impress in itself. So that the film still stands as an intriguing, quite gripping and in parts quite funny piece is surely evidence of its quality.In the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies British films were all too often small-scale imitations of Hollywood's work - not always, certainly, but all too often. For one thing British producers and directors simply didn't command the budgets available to their U.S. counterparts.They were thus, rather like indy filmmakers today, obliged to rely more on their imagination and scriptwriting than simply to resort to some kind of manic car chase or violent shoot-out to achieve some kind of distinction, but with The Long Good Friday, they were beginning to hit their stride and gain ever more confidence. Certainly, the film does, in parts, look rather more threadbare than contemporary U.S. productions, but it doesn't matter anymore: the Brits had finally evolved their own style.Central to the film in every way is (the now late) Bob Hoskins whose character, gang leader with ambitions Harold Shand, finds his well-ordered world and criminal empire unravel in just 48 hours. And in keeping with Shand's dry and ironic humour its all based on a horrible, though very tragic, misunderstanding. It's tragic because nine or ten people are murdered, sometimes quite horribly, yet the misunderstanding which sparks off the chain of events is in a macabre way almost comic. Shand himself, a man accustomed to calling all the shots and having his very whim acted on at a moment's notice, finds himself utterly helpless when he tries to find out who is trying to destroy him.Hoskins, a true Londoner, carved a niche for himself playing this kind of London gangster, but then went on to play other, very different parts, to show what a truly versatile actor he was. And the role of Shand fits him like a glove, and his subtle performance makes this extremely violent and ruthless gang boss even oddly likable, and we catch glimpses of a quite vulnerable man underneath the hard as nails exterior.He is aided by good performances throughout, from Helen Mirren as his upmarket squeeze who is bright enough to advise him well, to his various lieutenants, including the one who's fateful decision sets of the events which lead to Shand's downfall.So, you won't be getting some slick piece of filmmaking with all the latest bells and whistles, but you will get a thoroughly entertaining account of one man's swift decline and fall from all-powerful gang boss to soon to be murdered gang boss, and in all if it he had not put a foot wrong. That's just one of the many delightful ironies.

This wasn't quite the classic noir gangster film I was hoping it was going to be, but it's certainly worth a view if you're into that sort of thing (I am).For the positives you have a solid cast, led by Hoskins and Mirren. I didn't quite buy Hoskins in a couple of the early scenes (notably the Hands Across the Pond speech and his first big scene with his assembled cronies) but the totality of the performance is very compelling, especially his ill-fated outro. Mirren is great as the only deft and clever (and sexy) member of his entourage.The dialogue--the bits of it I could understand of it anyway--was well-written, and that's always appreciated.The movie also sported some great, lived-in locations that gives the movie a bit of scummy charm that would have been overly glossed if made today.For the negatives you are pretty much stuck with a rather clueless and boorish main character whose redeeming qualities are few and far between. Good person? No. Good gangster? No. Good protagonist? Debatable. I found it really hard to care about Shand and his tribulations or his inevitable downfall. The last scene would have been killer if I gave a crap (I did not) and how that scene works for you is probably the litmus test for the whole movie.Though, to be fair, Harold Shand is a cuddly teddy bear next to twitchy psycho Tony Montana, mad-dog psycho sexy beast Don Logan, and the not-psycho but still a serial murderer from Get Carter (I forget his name).The pacing is also a little slow. The first 2/3 has too many befuddled gangster scenes and not enough tension. The last 1/3 is all "wake me when Hoskins buys it". My attention wandered in a couple of scenes and it really could have been trimmed by 10 minutes or so.Still there's enough compelling content for a look, especially if you're a fan of Hoskins, Mirren, gangsters, or shady urban-renewal projects.