The Long Good Friday (1981)

Directed by John Mackenzie. Starring Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren. Derek Thompson, Dave King, Bryan Marshall, Eddie Constantine, P. H. Moriarty, Paul Freeman, Brian Hall, Alan Ford. [R]

Tense, gripping London-set crime pic with a formidable center—a short, balding, energetic bulldog of a gangster played by Hoskins in his first great movie role/performance. He’s the ambitious and tough-as-nails Harold Shand, preparing a major business deal with a visiting American mobster, but everything he worked so hard to build starts crashing down around him when he and his associates become the targets of a series of attacks and bombings, and he can’t figure out who’s responsible or why. Opens with a procession of cryptic, sometimes violent, seemingly disconnected events that will only become clear later, but as soon as Harold enters the scene, with a smart and loyal mistress (Mirren) and shifty right-hand man (Thompson) at his side, the storytelling and filmmaking turn electric. Ruthless yet darkly funny, throbbing to the liquid danger of Francis Monkman’s moody score, shot on location with a vivid sense of not just the inner workings of the London underworld, but the taste and smell of it, too. The final scene, held almost entirely in close-up on Hoskins’ face, is justifiably famous in the genre. Pierce Brosnan appears as an IRA gunman in his film debut.

95/100