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Here’s my review of the film, The Long Good Friday.
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Short filmTranscript
00:12hey guys how's it going it's me Bo back here on the film scene investigation channel thank you so
00:20much for checking out this video in today's review i'm going to be taking a look at a british
00:29gangster classic the long good friday now this was a movie that had been on my watch list for some
00:38time
00:38and what kind of spurred me on to actually watch it recently was that i came across in x post
00:47and a load of you know people were commenting and saying man this is amazing Bob Hoskins you know
00:54mirror and you know just loads of you know people praising it and yeah you know i saw the trailer
01:01and uh i was i was kind of in the mood for something kind of you know in the gangster
01:06genre so i decided
01:08to check it out before we get into it guys just a reminder if you haven't already please do consider
01:16subscribing to the channel all the support is greatly appreciated so the long good friday
01:24from 1980 was a movie that was directed by the filmmaker john mckenzie and was based on a screenplay
01:32by the writer barry keith now this movie was completed in 1979 but due to some production delays
01:42the film didn't get a wide release until 1981 now the reason for these delays were down to the fact
01:51that the producers were scared of any potential retaliation from the ira since this movie
02:01yeah i guess arguably kind of portrayed the ira as somewhat negative so yeah it was a different time
02:11and uh at that point the ira were a real threat so yeah it got delayed but eventually got the
02:20wide release
02:20it thoroughly deserved as for the story it's centered around the british gangster harold shand
02:28who was played by the late bob hoskins he had just returned uh back to london for a business trip
02:35and it's safe to say that this was a guy that uh oozed confidence you know he had a lot
02:42of business
02:42connections and uh was kind of untouchable he had a lot of power i mean he owned a casino he
02:51owned a yacht
02:52i mean um yeah he was rich shand also had a right-hand man a guy that he could depend
03:01on
03:02and that was a man called jeff who was played by actor derrick thompson now this guy was the eyes
03:09and ears of shand's operation whatever went down he knew about it you know and this was someone that
03:17shand could well not just depend on but fully trust with his life after years of criminal activity
03:26shand was in the process of trying to legitimize his business this was a big change but you know a
03:36a step forward it was something that was going to be difficult but both shand and his wife victoria
03:43who was played by helen mirren together they thought that this was the best option for the future
03:50there was a lot of optimism in the air things were moving fast and a lot of you know decisions
03:58were
03:58being made and shand wanted to be ahead of the table making sure that he was in charge and making
04:05sure he earned the most money as he laid out these plans to expand his ever-growing empire things soon
04:14got complicated when two of shand's men who worked for him both ended up being killed one guy was killed
04:23in an explosion car bomb outside a church of all places and another guy was brutally stabbed in the
04:32shower you know this was no coincidence you know this wasn't something uh just two random attacks
04:38no no this was a warning of course this threat from some unknown enemy it left shand in you know
04:48disarray
04:49he was confused over you know what he had done to deserve this kind of treatment and so he decided
04:57to
04:57pull all of his resources together to find out who was responsible we saw him call up all of his
05:06connections to try and gain some information but no matter how hard he tried shand couldn't get the
05:14answers he wanted nobody was talking and according to everyone else nobody knew anything and just when
05:22you thought that the two killings you know were enough to send a message which they did well that
05:29wasn't enough and soon we saw shand's local pub being blown up in front of him i will say this
05:37uh
05:38this scene definitely caught me off guard i mean at the time i i expected something to happen maybe
05:45some sort of i don't know gun attack inside the pub or something like that but after seeing already
05:53one car bomb explosion i wasn't expecting another you know another bomb so yeah it definitely caught me
05:59off guard and um yeah in terms of the practical effects you know well done to everyone because uh
06:06it looked pretty amazing i mean it was pretty ugly sight with all the pub goers sprawled out
06:12you know glass everywhere people injured and shand's wife victoria i mean yeah she was definitely at
06:21that point very concerned and all shand could do was try and console her and well practically lie
06:29and pretend that he had everything under control now some of the themes that i picked up on while
06:37watching the long good friday were honesty and betrayal and that was encapsulated in the jeff
06:46and harold shand relationship these two guys were close they had history together and it was quite
06:54evident that yeah they cared for one another but once jeff betrayed his boss well it signified that
07:05ultimately harold shand couldn't trust anyone this all tied in to the christian allegory that the
07:14filmmakers used to tell harold shand's story with jeff becoming judas a liar watching that scene play out
07:24um it's definitely one of the best scenes in the entire film once harold you know realizes that he's
07:33been betrayed and by someone that he deeply cared about it was definitely impactful to say the least
07:40and i think that is because betrayal um it's kind of like a almost a universal feeling unless you've been
07:50under a rock you know anyone that's lived a life you know at times there will be betrayals and
07:57you know it's not great but it is very much a part of life so i think in terms of
08:02in in that sense you
08:04know it's very relatable what i also found interesting was that the harold shand character
08:10represented the old school mentality back when a man's word meant something honor among thieves
08:20you know it would be a good expression to use but times were changing and someone like shand
08:29well he was never going to be able to survive he was no match for the ira he was no
08:37match for the
08:38mafia you know up until that point harold shand was very much a big fish in a small pond but
08:47once that
08:47pond started to develop and grow suddenly harold shand didn't have the resources to take charge so
08:58ultimately taking all of that into account this movie is very much a gripping character study of a man
09:08whose bravado and naivety blinded him from what was actually going on around him and once he fully
09:18realized what was going on well it was too late that leads me on nicely to talk about the scene
09:27where
09:27harold shand gave his speech on the boat now this was a great moment with harold expressing his love
09:36for the city that he grew up in and yeah it was pretty much a very proud cockney gangster as
09:45all of
09:45his friends and business colleagues watched on now the speech itself was a social commentary on the
09:52ever-changing britain of the late 1970s the old ways were being phased out and a lot of new developments
10:02were underway it was very much a new era where global capitalism and political violence became
10:13the norm and for me personally i did find it a little sad to be honest with you uh listening
10:20to that speech
10:21because there was a lot of hopefulness in the dialogue that uh you know bob hoskins was saying
10:31but to fast forward 40 years and to see what london has become you know it's crime ridden uh it's
10:43it's a dump now of course this was not immediate you know it took several years for this to happen
10:51but i guess the real kind of key moment was when new labor uh got in to power 1997 tony
11:00blair
11:01and you know opened the floodgates to low-skilled immigration and which has basically changed the
11:08social makeup of the uk but specifically in london and i can say that because i'm a londoner i can
11:16say
11:17it firsthand i have experience seeing and witnessing the changes and um you know hopefully one day we'll get
11:24back to that you know but in the meantime watching these films and uh looking at the
11:31just the i don't know the the celebratory kind of mood um that was captured during that film um
11:40yeah it's just sad to see what london's become fully corrupt from the judges to politicians to
11:49you know pretty much everyone now one of the best parts of the film in my opinion was its pacing
11:58because at no point was i bored and at no point did the story start to you know drag or
12:07anything like
12:08that it really uh was pretty relentless especially when the bombs started going off i do think by having
12:16the film take place over a good friday weekend you know it kind of heightened the movie's tension
12:25the compressed time frame well it kind of made you feel on edge just like harold shand did you knew
12:33that there was a threat incoming you just didn't know when or where as for the performances i have to
12:40commend the late bob hoskins for his role playing harold shand it really was an impressive performance
12:48as the actor he showed a wide range of emotions one minute he was very ferocious and you know angry
12:58the next he was quite vulnerable i thought it was a really good casting choice to get bob hoskins to
13:05play this uh cockney gangster and having now seen the film i completely understand all the admiration
13:16that hoskins received from his work he really did a good job so credit to him though i will say
13:25there were a few minor moments in which i kind of thought hoskins
13:33was a little bit over the top now this was very subtle it only happened a few times
13:40and it didn't ruin my overall enjoyment of the performance but um just especially when harold
13:50you know would get angry there just were a few moments where it kind of seemed a little bit
13:58forced as if he was you know trying too hard to sound intimidating as for helen mirren i thought
14:06she did a very good job playing a victoria shand's wife an intelligent woman who had a lot of loyalty
14:15to her husband she was behind him every step of the way trying to help him and trying to prevent
14:23any more trouble from happening i like the fact that the filmmakers attempted to establish the victoria
14:30character giving her some importance rather than making her some generic gangster's mole seeing helen
14:38mirren in this role um it was kind of surprising because for me personally i've always seen helen
14:49mirren as an old lady i mean to some this might sound strange but my earliest recollection of helen mirren
14:59was when she played the queen in the biopic i think that was in 2006 so you know a long
15:07time ago
15:08and yeah i mean growing up she was always just uh you know old looking woman so yeah to see
15:17her
15:17in the long good friday much younger yeah you know she was definitely a beautiful woman for sure as for
15:28derrick thompson i thought he did a very good job playing harold shand's right hand man jeff now
15:36thompson is an actor who i've been aware of for many years he was in a show called casualty and
15:45that's i
15:46guess his most kind of famous role i knew him primarily as a tv actor so similar to helen mirren
15:56seeing this guy you know who i'd see on tv um when i was a kid yeah it was just
16:03really surprising
16:04and even more so that i thought derrick thompson actually you know delivered a very good performance
16:11and that surprised me that he never really went on to have an established film career he pretty much
16:19became a long-standing you know tv actor and you know hey you know fair enough good luck to the
16:27guy
16:27but um he showed a lot of potential here and i'm surprised that um he never went on to do
16:35more
16:35films also actor paul barber made a brief appearance as the character errol this street
16:45thug who harold needed to try and squeeze some information out of now this was a small role but
16:54uh quite memorable i thought barber did a pretty good job now he's someone that uh many uk audiences
17:03would know from the likes of only fools and horses and very famous sitcom back here um but me
17:12personally i know him from his brief stint he did in the 90s on the soap opera brookside now that's
17:21a
17:21show that uh i really love and uh yeah you know in a way paul barber on brookside and in
17:28long
17:29good friday kind of similar kind of thug type characters so maybe this actor was uh you know
17:36forever typecast lastly i have to mention the actor piers brosnan who played an ira soldier in the film
17:45now yeah yeah it was his debut it caught me off guard i had no idea he was even in
17:51the film
17:51um and so yeah he had a total of maybe about two or three scenes so yes it was brief
17:59but still i think
18:02you could kind of see the potential and the you know charisma that this young actor had and so
18:09dislikes for the long good friday from 1980 my biggest dislike for the film would have to be the score
18:18that was composed by francis monkman now i might get some pushback on this because from what i've read
18:28online many people love this score they love the soundtrack and uh you know that's fair enough but
18:38um for me i just uh wasn't wasn't that impressed now before i get into the negatives one of the
18:45positives i thought was the main title theme that played at the beginning and at the end of the film
18:53i really liked that but it was only one track and for the rest i didn't really care for it
19:02with the
19:03heavy use of simps and saxophones i just didn't like it you know it it felt very bombastic at times
19:13very loud and uh i don't know man like uh i just think something more toned down would have really
19:23kind of um kind of heightened the serious nature of the actual story i totally understand that at the
19:33time this score from monkman would have been considered contemporary and yeah yeah i totally get
19:41that and i have to you know i can't compare this to today's standards of what we would expect
19:47in a motion picture soundtrack but um i've seen a lot of films especially from that era you know the
19:5570s and 80s and uh yeah it's it needed a more direct and kind of uh more brooding score for
20:06me and i think
20:07that would have uh i think that would have worked better i mean a good example of this would have
20:13been the shower sequence the uh the montage when harold shand was kind of washing away jeff's blood
20:22after he killed him now i mean look i didn't really want to see you know a semi-naked bob
20:30hoskins in the
20:31shower but to add this bombastic really dated saxophone track yeah i just didn't like it i thought
20:39that was the worst part of the film uh luckily it didn't last too long but uh hey if i
20:45was in the uh
20:46editing room i would have cut that out and so ratings for the long good friday from 1980
20:55i'm gonna be rating this movie a solid 7 out of 10 the long good friday was a thoroughly enjoyable
21:04gangster film that um well i wish i'd seen sooner growing up i was aware of the film but i
21:14never had
21:14it on video or dvd i never saw it on tv and none of my friends or anyone really ever
21:22brought it up in
21:24conversation so this film for me kind of yeah it flew under my radar i guess that's the beauty of
21:32you know doing this film scene investigation and getting to go back and celebrate the you know
21:38brilliant cinema of the past and yeah like catch up on all kind of the classics that i missed and
21:46this
21:46was certainly one of them i've always considered the michael kane movie get carter
21:53as kind of the pinnacle of british gangster films there's been some you know brilliant films over
22:00the years so it's you know very debatable but um having now seen the long good friday
22:08while i can't say it's the best it's certainly up there you know i can totally understand why this
22:16film has been praised so much over the years if you've seen the long good friday then please let
22:24me know your thoughts and memories in the comment section below for those out there who have not
22:31seen this one yet it is of course a recommendation from me i think if you're into gangster films then
22:41definitely check it out i think as well if you're in the mood for just something very kind of
22:49british then uh yeah i think you'll like this one too that's all from me today guys i do hope
22:56you've
22:56enjoyed this review of the long good friday from 1980 of course next week i'll be back with another
23:03review just in case you haven't guys please do consider subscribing it does mean a lot
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