The Long Good Friday

 Year:  1980

Director:  John Mackenzie

Screenplay:  Barrie Keeffe

Starring:  Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren

Running Time:  114 minutes

Genre:  Thriller

Harry Shand (Hoskins) is a powerful, ruthless gangster, who has plans to go legitimate with a scheme to redevelop the London Docklands with the aid of mafia investors from New York.  However, on the day of the mafiosi fly into London, Harry's empire is threatened by a series of bombings, and the stabbing of one of his closest associates.  Tasking his mistress, Victoria (Mirren) with handling the negotiations, Harry sets out on a violent quest to put a stop to the attacks.

This is one of the great, underrated classics of British gangster films.  The film mixes themes of political and police corruption, and the IRA, as well as an optimism about Britain becoming a European powerhouse, which in these days rings bitterly hollow.  Bob Hoskins had made a name as the star of the 1979 TV series Pennies from Heaven, but this was his first major film role.  He gives a fantastic performance as the brutal Harry Shand, mixing affability with menace, presenting himself as a legitimate, reasonable businessman but turning on friend or foe alike with brutal ferocity when crossed.  Helen Mirren is also memorable as the icy, intelligent Victoria, who serves almost as Shand's PA, and the acceptable face of his organisation.  The rest of the cast is full of now familiar faces from British TV and film, including Pierce Brosnan in his film debut as an IRA hitman.  The script is intelligent, with moments of dark humour, and the direction is slick, and the film maintains tension throughout, along with frequent, and often shocking moments of explosive violence.

Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday

Mona Lisa

Year of Release:  1986
Director:  Neil Jordan
Screenplay:  Neil Jordan and David Leland
Starring:  Bob Hoskins, Cathy Tyson, Michael Caine, Robbie Coltrane, Clarke Peters, Kate Hardie
Running Time:  104 minutes
Genre:  Drama, thriller

George (Hoskins) is a small-time London gangster who is released after seven years in prison and is given a job a driver and bodyguard to call girl Simone (Tyson).  The two take an instant dislike to each other but their mutual animosity warms into a tentative friendship and George begins to fall in love with her.  On Simone's behalf, he embarks on a dangerous odyssey through London's sleaziest clubs and vice dens to rescue a young girl.

Irish director Neil Jordan is probably best known for such films as The Crying Game (1992) and Interview with a Vampire (1994).  In this stylish British gangland thriller, which plays a little like a London take on Taxi Driver (1976), Jordan moves from gritty realism to almost surrealism.  Bob Hoskins was Oscar nominated for his portrayal of the conflicted and strangely naïve hoodlum, who moves between a kind of gruff compassion to bursts of savage violence, he always seems like a powderkeg that can detonate at any moment.  Cathy Tyson is impressive as the enigmatic Simone.  Michael Caine appears as Denny Mortwell, George's suave, sleazy boss, a wealthy pornographer, pimp, procurer and blackmailer, and comedian and actor Robbie Coltrane provides one of the film's few glimpses of warmth and humanity as Thomas, George's eccentric but kind-hearted mechanic friend.  While this plays essentially as an above average British gangster thriller, it has a style and offbeat humour that really elevates it.  It is definitely worth watching, but be warned it goes into some very disturbing territory and gets really dark at times. 

Cathy Tyson and Bob Hoskins in Mona Lisa