The Long Good Friday
by John Mackenzie
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Kevin McNally, Leo Dolan, P.H. Moriarty, Patti Love, Paul FreemanDirector: John Mackenzie
Brand: STARZ HOME ENTERTAINMENT
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0; French (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.77:1
Running Time: 109 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-04-04
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
Movie Reviews of The Long Good Friday
Movie Review: Boring
Summary: 1 Stars
The best thing about this film is the soundtrack. 79 Euro disco and hypnotic psyche prog rock. I give the sounds track 5 stars.
The movie itself. Not so good. Unless you like boring. none of the characters are sympathetic or fascinating. theres a lot of dead air where nothings is going on. the violence is sudden sadistic and revolting, and very rare. theres not much sense of impending doom or walls closing in. theres an obvious shakespear influence - but its no where close to that kind of quality. then tried to prop it up.
the lead gangsters rant against americans at the end seems sudden and not really fitting with the theme of the film. there is a xenophobic undertone to the film - the bad guys are black, irish, or american.
this one doesnt seem up to criterion quality. more like they licensed cheap back catalog. I could barely stay awake. My GF fell asleep in the first 20min. I held on hoping it was building to something... not really.
Summary of The Long Good Friday
Academy Award? nominee Bob Hoskins delivers a ferocious performance as mobster Harold Shand, the all-powerful boss of the London underworld. But on the day he is about to close the ultimate deal with an American crime family, Shand's empire suddenly - and literally - begins to explode around him. Who would dare attack Britain's most ruthless gangster? How far will he go to find the truth? And what is the deadly secret behind the havoc of THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY? Oscar? nominee Helen Mirren (GOSFORD PARK, CALIGULA), tough guy icon Eddie Constantine (ALPHAVILLE), and Pierce Brosnan (in one of his first film roles) co-star in this now-classic crime drama that critics compare to THE GODFATHER and SCARFACE as one of the greatest gangster films of all time.Intricately plotted and smartly paced, this gangster saga clicks as whodunit, social satire, and explosive thriller. The piece is crowned by Bob Hoskins's career-making turn as a London mobster courting respectability and Helen Mirren's subtly detailed performance as his upper-crust mistress. Cockney wiseguy Harold Shand is a would-be burgher whose domination of the city's underworld stems from his shrewdness as a mediator and his skill at harnessing political and economic clout. As Easter approaches, he's poised to launch an aggressive real estate development scheme along the depressed Thames waterfront when all hell breaks loose: a trusted lieutenant is brutally murdered, Shand's mother is nearly killed in a car bombing, one of his pubs is blown apart, and the visiting American don crucial to the pending deal is quickly growing wary.
Barrie Keeffe's original screenplay keeps the viewer a step ahead of Shand, providing us with a telling but teasingly incomplete glimpse of the misstep by his underlings that has set chaos loose. At the same time, Keeffe underlines the bourgeois pretensions of the rough-hewn, barrel-chested Shand, how the elegant Victoria (Mirren) helps serve those ambitions, and the myriad parallels between Shand's minions and the local politicians and police only too willing to join in his scheme. Tart, funny dialogue and alternately playful and pungent Eastertide imagery complete Keeffe's shrewd design--two key scenes, in a meat locker and a warehouse, invoke the Crucifixion itself.
Even with lesser performances, the script and John Mackenzie's solid direction would make The Long Good Friday a keeper, but Hoskins's explosive portrait of Shand and his descent toward brutal revenge elevates the film into the very front rank, earning admiring comparisons to The Godfather, Scarface, GoodFellas, and other classics of that genre. On DVD, Criterion's new digital transfer restores more than just the widescreen aspect ratio--the film has never looked better, even if an occasionally muddy sound mix survives to make the thick Cockney accents a challenge to decipher. --Sam Sutherland
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