Tag Archives: bobhoskins

The Cult Movie Club: The Long Good Friday (1980)

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Every post-1971 British crime movie has had ‘Get Carter’ and ‘Performance’ in its rearview mirror.

Made in summer 1979 but not released until 18 months later, ‘The Long Good Friday’ (original title: ‘The Paddy Factor’) has often been mentioned in the same breath as ‘Carter’. Is that justified?

Initially bankrolled by legendary impresario and producer Lew Grade, it was written by proper East Ender Barrie Keeffe (who reportedly knew Ronnie Kray), directed by Scotsman John Mackenzie and starred Brit acting ‘royalty’ Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren.

When completed, the suits almost refused it a cinema run, deeming it too nasty, hoping to recut it and farm it out to television. A disgusted Mirren asked her friend Eric Idle to attend the premiere at the London Film Festival towards the end of 1980.

Idle was impressed and passed it on to his mate George Harrison, the main moneyman at newly-formed HandMade films. Harrison apparently loathed it but agreed it had hit potential. HandMade bought it for £700,000, funded by ‘Life Of Brian’ profits.

But how does ‘The Long Good Friday’ stack up in 2024? I watched the posh new 4K restoration – looks fabulous, but this film really belongs in a mid-’80s Cannon fleapit. With its casual racism/sexism/ableism and overlong dialogue scenes, it’s also now more redolent of ‘Sweeney!’, ‘The Squeeze’ and ‘Villiain’ than ‘Performance’ or ‘Get Carter’ – but is still fascinating and memorable.

There’s some real Brit nastiness, or ‘virtuoso viciousness’, as Pauline Kael called it in her ‘Carter’ review. Mackenzie comes up with three or four memorable set pieces (and a great final five minutes, apparently the first thing they shot, during which apparently the director drove the car and ‘fed’ Hoskins the entire plot of the film) which have given the movie legs. He also uses the London locations with some elan.

Keeffe comes up with some preposterously funny lines – ‘It’s like Belfast on a bad day!’ etc. – and Francis ‘Sky’ Monkman’s disco/prog/fusion score adds value. There’s also an amazing array of ‘Hey, it’s that guy/girl!’ actors, from Pierce Brosnan (whose swimming pool scene seems to have influenced Bronksi Beat’s ‘Smalltown Boy’ vid) to Gillian Taylforth.

Sadly though the key performance by Derek Thompson (Charlie in ‘Casualty’!) weighs the film down with its stoned insouciance and dodgy London accent (ironically, Thompson was born in Belfast).

And though some have compared Hoskins with Edward G Robinson and James Cagney (Keeffe apparently pictured a cockney Humphrey Bogart!), despite some amusing line readings these days he comes across more like Alan Sugar after a few too many espressos, whereas Michael Caine in ‘Carter’ had a kind of timeless, glacial rage.

Apparently under the influence of ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’, Empire magazine – astonishingly – voted ‘The Long Good Friday’ the #1 greatest British film in a 2000 poll. Hard to think it would get that accolade today. Still, it’s a fascinating snapshot of London on the brink of Thatcher’s decade, and a must-see for fans of 1980s cinema.

Further reading: ‘Very Naughty Boys’ by Robert Sellers

London Lockdown Circa 1980: ‘Babylon’ & ‘Breaking Glass’

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One of the few positives of this lockdown may be investigating your local area more than usual, courtesy of the ‘permitted’ (approved by UK government) daily walks.

And if London is your manor, the mostly-silent, near-empty streets may just take you back to the city of your youth, when car ownership was relatively rare and there was plenty of room to kick a football or swing a cricket bat – mainly for sporting purposes, you understand.

Joking aside, London felt pretty edgy at the turn of the ’80s. Youth subcultures fought each other, and the police fought them. Some parts of the city had barely moved on from the Victorian era. There were great swathes of wasteland, still reeling from World War 2 bombs. Tube trains and stations were often deserted and you might even get a slap (there didn’t seem to be many knives around) if you wandered into the ‘wrong’ neighbourhood (hello Gary Bates…). This great bit of archive TV from 1982 sums up the era very well:

It was a London also accurately captured by feature films like ‘The Long Good Friday’, ‘Babylon’, ‘The Clash: Rude Boy’, ‘DOA’, ‘The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle’ and ‘Breaking Glass’, all released 40 years ago. ‘Babylon’ was illuminated by sumptuous photography by legendary Brit cinematographer Chris Menges (‘Kes’, ‘The Mission’, ‘The Killing Fields’), capturing rundown, turn-of-the-decade Lewisham, south-east London, site of a notorious August 1977 battle between the National Front and 10,000 protestors.

All of these films accurately capture the energy of inner-city life during the late-’70s and early-’80s, and the pressures of young people living at the sharp end of recession, racism and unemployment. Also ever-present is the constant theme of music-business skullduggery and police brutality. But it’s all shot through with healthy doses of humour and humanity, particularly throughout ‘Babylon’.

For all the benefits of ‘gentrification’ and the corporate restructuring of the capital, true Londoners of a certain age probably feel a tinge of nostalgia about the time when they seemed to own the streets, when there were many secrets to be found in the city’s nooks and crannies – for better or worse.