Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!

Tacticalin An absolute waste of money

Jemima It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

christopher-underwood I was drawn to watching this again, partly because it was shot just before the whole Thames and Docklands redevelopment began, I'd recently rewatched Helen Mirren in Greenaway's, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and her Lover and I had a Blu ray disc. The big surprise was how much I enjoyed the film. I don't remember holding it in much affection but was very impressed, not only with the shots of now disappeared dockland areas, but the way the film unfolds with much tension and constant surprises. The inclusion of references to the IRA ensure that this is not to be some ordinary London gangland film from the start and subsequent explosions keep this from being some petty tale of in fighting. Helen Mirren is exceptional here and very much helps to hold things together. There are some actors here who need steadying and she certainly seems to have great influence, even with Bob Hoskins, who can seem rather flat or alternatively over the top. Here he seems to take his cue from Mirren and gives one of his very best performances - till the very end, don't miss it! As in the Greenaway film, she again plays the gangster's moll although a good deal less trodden down in this one. Well worth watching, this keeps moving with great dialogue and visuals.

Michael J Salmestrelli (vonnoosh) British gangster movies can be a little predictable. What keeps them alive is how well the lead is and how interesting the plot unfolds. This film accomplishes both excellently. This is one of the rare movies where you learn what's the major issue along with the main character and this is a good 45 minutes into it at least.The film opens with a lengthy sequence of scenes strung together by Francis Monkman's excellent score. While no one is speaking, you are following things because they are moving quickly. These events are not explained to us though. We simply see them. I won't describe them except to say, it's this sequence that the viewer learns the meaning of along with Bob Hoskins' Harold Shand who is introduced immediately following it.Shand arrives home from an undisclosed location but you can assume it wherever he was, it was a major success for him and his organization. He has plans to expand his organization but he needs further financial assistance by American gangsters who he meets on Good Friday. Without knowing anything about what's happening, people in his employ are being brutally murdered. He launches an investigation and needless to say, things are a surprise to him.What makes this film interesting is Bob Hoskins' portrayal of Harold Shand. You learn all about the type of man he is, the type of character he always had and most importantly, how he got to be as powerful as he became. You learn the value of Helen Mirren's Victoria (Shand's wife). If nothing else, she stabilizes his inner reactionary rage. I imagine Shand fell back on her channeling him more than a few times in order to get to where he is in the story.The story is somewhat dated but it's dated like the movie War Games was. The then news headlines played a heavy role in the events in the story. In War Games it was the panic of an all out nuclear war between the US and USSR many were assuming was inevitable in the early 80's. In The Long Good Friday, it was something else entirely but no less important to what the landscape of London looked like in the late 70's and early 80's A young Pierce Brosnan has a dialog free role but no less important to the story. Paul Freeman also has no spoken word role in the story but he also is vital to how the story unfolds.On the whole, this is a movie that comes off as an experiment that really works well. All of the aspects of a good crime/action movie are here but they are presented in a different way, with a different story and with explosive, at times highly disturbing results. Truly worth seeing.

SnoopyStyle Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) is a successful London gangster aspiring to be a legitimate owner of the abandoned Docklands for a casino and other developments with American mafia money. Victoria (Helen Mirren) is his smarter better half. While he sips champagne with corrupt cops and American mobster Charlie, IRA hit-man (Pierce Brosnan) is killing his right hand man. His other guy Eric is blown up in a car bomb outside of church on Good Friday. Harold tries to uncover the cause and finds that a minor deal unknown to him connected to IRA had gone terribly wrong. The IRA holds Harold personally responsible.This is a great staring performance from Bob Hoskins. He infuses this movie with great energy. Without him, the movie does struggle a little. The plot doesn't have much tension. It also has a great young Pierce Brosnan prominently as a nameless IRA hit-man.

My_Pet_Mongoose 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.