After
reading 'Very Naughty Boys', about Handmade Films, my interest was
piqued to watch The Long Good Friday, especially as I knew it was
shot at a time (1979) before the London docklands was developed, so
would have some historically interesting footage.
It
seems you can't move for the garlands of praise being heaped on this
film, both at the time and in retrospect with a new print of the film
in the cinema in recent years, but, even though Hoskins delivers a
star turn, ably supported by Helen Mirren, the rest of the supporting
cast I thought were very weak, the characterisation paper thin,
performances quite hammy, especially the key character of Hoskin's
right hand man, played by Derek Thompson, who would go on to find
fame in 'Casualty' - he was very unconvincing. He seemed to sort of
sleep walk through the role. I also found it hard to get past the
casting of Brian Hall, better known as the chef in Fawlty Towers, as
one of Hoskins' henchmen - the face was just too familiar from the
wrong context (even though it took me a while to place it).
And
parts of the script really show their age, especially in this scene
with Brian King's character of the bent copper talking to Hoskins
about the proposed 1988 London Olympics and 'nig nogs doing the long
jump..' (ouch). Yes, historically accurate and all that, but I'm sure
the actor would wince in later years to remember the line. No
different I suppose to Vietnamese being called slopes in Apocalypse
Now or the amount of times Samuel L Jackson says 'nigger' in Jackie
Brown - it's authentic without being necessarily gratuitous, but
grates (more so in the 1979 examples).
The
scriptwriter Barrie Keefe did his research amongst the hard men
associates of the Krays and others, but for such a dramatic story the
film has a curious lack of tension and is oddly paced. Hard to
connect with any characters or their eventual fate. The very young
Dexter Fletcher appears in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment (he
would have been about 13 years old) with some street kids being
cheeky to Hoskins. I thought the soundtrack (by Curved Air's Francis
Monkman) was awful, very dated, even for the time, trying far too
hard.
The
film features Pierce Brosnan as an IRA hitman in his first
(non-speaking) film role. Lew Grade wanted it for TV transmission
originally but was not keen on what he saw as the glorification of
the IRA, and demanded substantial cuts. Ultimately George Harrison's
company Handmade Films would step into the breach and give it an
uncut cinema release. Film maker Sé Merry Doyle recalls considerable police and special branch presence at the opening in Dublin, monitoring the crowd in the old Irish Film Theatre (now the Sugar Club), with Helen Mirren also in attendance.
What's
interesting in the current climate is how pro-Europe Hoskins'
character is, and how he might have been fairly knocked out by the
scale of development that came in Thatcher's wake, far in excess of
his dreams I imagine. Interesting too that his character's name,
Shand is so phonetically close to one of the symbols of London's
prodigious development, the Shard.
Barrie
Keeffe wrote a sequel, Black Easter Monday, set twenty years after
the events of the first film. It opened with Bob Hoskins' character
escaping from the IRA after the car was pulled over by police.
Hoskins would retire to Jamaica, then return to stop the East End
being taken over by the Yardies. Perhaps it was just as well the film
was never made.
My
Father took me on my first visit to London for a few days in Easter
'81. We went to see Rowan Atkinson do a stand up show, but could only
get one ticket, so Dad let me go in and he went to see The Long Good
Friday, but left before the end to come and collect me (I suppose it
never occurred to him that I could wait till the film finished). It
was years before he saw it in full on TV. He took this photo of me on
Carnaby Street. Turns out the film's production office was located
here !
