The Long Good Friday - Criterion Collection
by John Mackenzie
List Price:
Our Price: $26.99
You Save: $2.96 (10%)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Buy Used: from $9.09 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD Cover Information
Actor: Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren, Kevin McNally, Leo Dolan, Paul FreemanDirector: John Mackenzie
Cinematographer: Phil Meheux
Editor: Mike Taylor
Producer: Barry Hanson
Producer: Chris Griffin
Producer: Denis O'Brien
Producer: George Harrison
Writer: Barrie Keeffe
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Color, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: Letterbox, 1.78:1
Running Time: 114 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1998-11-24
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of The Long Good Friday - Criterion Collection
Movie Review: Important movie to see - but it does not live up to the hype
Summary: 3 Stars
The Long Good Friday, considered one of the best British gangster flicks, takes the classic story of hubristic downfall and sets it in late-seventies London. Bob Hoskins plays Harold Shand, a gangland kingpin trying to "go legit" by investing in some shorefront property which will one day host the Olympics. After a trip across the Atlantic to meet with his American gangster counterparts, he brings them back to East London where he hopes to convince them to invest with him in the shorefront property.
That's when things go wrong: his henchmen start dying and his local haunts get blown up, raising doubt in the Americans about the security of their potential investment. Harold Shand, in an interesting twist, turns from gangster to detective, and ruthlessly investigates all his known associates. Some unforgettable ultra-violence ensues, as he hangs his suspects on meat hooks, stabs his right-hand man in the throat with a broken Scotch bottle, and eventually discovers that it's all been a misunderstanding. But it's too late, and he's in over his head, against the law and against none other than the IRA. Drunk on power and a thirst for revenge, Harold Shand's arrogance finally proves to be his Achilles heel.
What's not to like about a gangster flick with a plot like this? It's also got a classic moll played by Helen Mirren, and a host of other actors who would later go on to become stars in their own right, most notably Pierce Brosnan in a non-speaking role as an IRA hitman. But the problem with The Long Good Friday is that it completely lacks style.
You can fault modern gangster movies for gratuitous stylized flourishes - most notably Ritchie's overwrought attempts - but here you have a movie that is completely lacking in any style at all. The lighting, the camerawork, and most annoyingly, an atrocious eighties synthesizer soundtrack, seem like they came straight out of an uninspired television movie. What saves The Long Good Friday are two things: Bob Hoskins' excellent incarnation of a pugnacious and racist gangster boss, saving every scene he is in, no matter how blandly directed. The other thing that saves this movie has to do with a fortuitous premonition.
This was made at the very beginning of the eighties when Margaret Thatcher came into power, ushering in, along with Reagan, the philosophy of unfettered free market liberalism. Harold Shand repeatedly refers to his gang as "The Corporation", and it's easy to see him as one step removed from a ruthless CEO in a legitimate corporation. Add to this the specter of terrorism, and you have a movie which resonates with anybody witnessing the 21st century. This universal quality, and some stand-out scenes make this a must-see gangster movie; but, in terms of quality filmmaking, it is nowhere near the best of the genre.
Any gangster movie will inevitably be compared to classics like Mean Streets and The Godfather, two classics from early 70s American cinema. Or perhaps British contenders from around the same time like Get Carter (which has a great soundtrack, by the way). The Long Good Friday can't hold a blowtorch to any of these. Even in terms of trashy appeal, DePalma's Scarface trounces The Long Good Friday. I could go on for days trying to pinpoint the exact point at which trashiness becomes aesthetically appealing, but I wouldn't be able to prove anything. It's just an intuition I have, which doesn't really have any logic to back it up. I can just say that close to 30 years after this movie was made, it looks and feels dated -- but it's still worth a watch, if not for Bob Hoskins' performance, than for what it portends.
Summary of The Long Good Friday - Criterion Collection
Bob Hoskins, in his breakthrough film role, stars as a London racketeer fast losing control of his gangland empire; Helen Mirren shines as his classy moll. John Mackenzie's stylish thriller is a marriage of gangster flicks from both sides of the Atlantic. Criterion presents The Long Good Friday in an exclusive widescreen transfer.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
Art House & International DVD Video
DVD Video
- Action & Adventure
- African American Cinema
- Animation
- Anime & Manga
- Art House & International
- Classics
- Comedy
- Cult Movies
- Documentary
- Drama
- Educational
- Fitness & Yoga
- Gay & Lesbian
- Horror
- Kids & Family
- Military & War
- Music Video & Concerts
- Musicals & Performing Arts
- Mystery & Suspense
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Special Interests
- Sports
- Television
- Westerns
Movies most talked about in The First Forty Volumes of the Criterion Collection
Armageddon (Criterion Collection Spine #40)WILLIS,BRUCE; Release date: 1999-04-20; DVD
Best price: $19.47
Price in other shops:
Tokyo Drifter (Criterion Collection Spine #39)Release date: 1999-02-23; DVD
Best price: $14.49
Price in other shops:
Branded to Kill (Criterion Collection Spine #38)Release date: 1999-02-23; DVD
Best price: $20.67
Price in other shops:
Time Bandits (Criterion Collection Spine #37)Release date: 1999-03-30; DVD
Best price: $24.98
Price in other shops:
The Wages of Fear - Criterion CollectionRelease date: 2005-10-25; DVD
Best price: $23.99
Price in other shops:
Diabolique (Criterion Collection Spine #35)Release date: 1999-01-26; DVD
Best price: $20.18
Price in other shops:
Andrei Rublev (Criterion Collection Spine #34)Release date: 1999-02-02; DVD
Best price: $28.13
Price in other shops:
Nanook of the North (Criterion Collection Spine #33)Release date: 1999-01-26; DVD
Best price: $20.61
Price in other shops:
Oliver Twist (1948) - Criterion CollectionRelease date: 1999-01-12; DVD
Best price: $27.42
Price in other shops:
Great Expectations (1946) (Criterion Collection Spine #31)Release date: 1999-01-12; DVD
Best price: $24.77
Price in other shops:
Similar DVD Movies
Point BlankWarner Brothers; Release date: 2005-07-05; DVD
Best price: $11.80
Price in other shops:
There Will Be BloodParamount; Release date: 2008-04-08; DVD
Best price: $12.25
Price in other shops:
Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels (Widescreen Edition)Universal; Release date: 2002-11-05; DVD
Best price: $6.95
Price in other shops:
Layer Cake (Widescreen)Sony; Release date: 2005-08-23; DVD
Best price: $6.89
Price in other shops:
The Third Man (50th Anniversary Edition) - Criterion CollectionDVD
Best price: $74.00
The LimeyLions Gate; Release date: 2001-02-20; DVD
Best price: $3.17
Price in other shops:
No Country for Old MenRelease date: 2008-03-11; DVD
Best price: $12.43
Price in other shops:
Sexy BeastRelease date: 2002-03-12; DVD
Best price: $7.46
Price in other shops:
Get CarterWarner Brothers; Release date: 2000-10-03; DVD
Best price: $13.00
Price in other shops:
Mona LisaSTARZ HOME ENTERTAINMENT; Release date: 2006-04-04; DVD
Best price: $6.38
Price in other shops: