The Long Good Friday

It's not about safety, it's about honour.

It's the early 1980s, it's Good Friday, and Harold Shand is waiting to entertain some powerful American muscle. He hopes to get them to help fund his dockside development, but someone is murdering his men, and although Harold has a good idea who is responsible, he isn't quite prepared for the events that follow.

Plot wise, The Long Good Friday is a lesson in under taxing the audience, simplicity in structure and forgoing thunder in the name of telling a solid story. The Long Good Friday is a British gangster picture that owes more to the Paul Muni and Edward G Robinson pictures from the golden age than something like "The Godfather". Where the characters are men of the street, working class ...

"Harold" (Bob Hoskins) has spent the last ten years building up a business of the back off criminal enterprises and is about to try to go straight with an hude dockside development he hopes to sell on to some Americans. They've arrived in London and he is all set to wine and dine them to seal the deal when things start going quite spectacularly wrong. His best pal "Colin" (Paul Freeman) is killed after seeking a quickie in the local swimming baths and one of his pubs suffers from what they conveniently describe as a "gas leak". He knows that someone is trying to queer his pitch, and that probably points to an insider. Girlfriend "Victoria" (Helen Mirren)? Ambitious sidekick "Jeff" (Derek Thompson) or maybe enforcer "Harris" (Bryan Marshall)...