The Long Good Friday is a British gangster film from the early 80s which combines some usual gangster film elements with some gritty British realism.
It must be more than thirty years since I first saw it, and the first thing that struck me was how there was so little that I remembered, only the famous meat warehouse scene seemed familiar.
At the core of the film is the character of Harold, played by Bob Hoskins, a sort of reformed gangster who has been keeping London quiet for the police while using his contacts within the police and local councils to ensure his business success. However, when he is in the USA trying to negotiate a deal with the mafia things go wrong at home and he is sucked into the world of IRA terrorism.
It’s an intriguing film for what it shows of London and the UK at the time. People are casually called ‘queer,’ ‘mick’ or other even more offensive words if you happen to be of another colour than white. Yet Harold’s best friend is known to be gay with no indication that this makes him a weak link. In another scene, Harold visits a rundown part of London to visit a Black police informant, initially lamenting that ‘it used to be a good neighbourhood,’ the classic complaint of the white racist, yet a few minutes later says, ‘these people deserve more.’ It’s only the Irish who seem to come off completely negatively, unless I remember wrongly all the Irish characters are terrorists or associates of terrorists.
Harold twice in the film proclaims his Europeanism, that Europe is Britain’s future, while simultaneously harking back to a ‘forgotten’ London of traditional pubs and when even gangsters looked after each other. But ultimately his European dream is a fantastical as his memories of old times, and he is thwarted by the power of the IRA, whose politics draws a fanaticism that seems hard to defeat. Make your own conclusions about what this tells us about today’s Brexit Britain!
Should you watch this film? Yes! Along with the glimpse into a Britain of the not so distant past, there’s a plot that has enough twists to keep you guessing to the end, excellent acting, and direction that isn’t flashy, but keeps the whole thing together. There’s also a lot less violence and blood than you’d expect from such a story, something I personally appreciated.
Read more about The Long Good Friday at https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081070/?ref_=ttawd_awd_tt.
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