4K ULTRA HD REVIEW / HDR SCREENSHOTS
The late Bob Hoskins gives the performance of his career as Harold Shand, the powerful East End crime boss who has big plans to develop the London Docklands.
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“THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY”
4K Ultra-HD; 1980; R for violence, language and brief nudity
Best extras: “The Long Good Friday” and Making ‘The Long Good Friday,” both included in the collector’s booklet
THANK YOU, Eric Idle.
Yes, that Eric Idle, and if the esteemed Python hadn’t taken Helen Mirren up on her invitation to attend a screening of the gangster film she’d just made with Bob Hoskins, who knows what fate would have befallen “The Long Good Friday”?
Actually, we do know. In “Making ‘The Long Good Friday,” an excerpt from his 2013 book “Very Naughty Boys,” a history of the upstart UK production/distribution company HandMade Films, Robert Sellers writes that Mirren (“The Queen”) called Idle because no one wanted to distribute the movie. On top of that, Lew Grade, the showbiz impresario who owned it, didn’t want to put it in theaters anyway. He was planning to slice and dice it to 80 minutes for TV.
Idle loved the movie and rang up Denis O’Brien, who founded HandMade with George Harrison – yes, that George Harrison – and said, “Put your money down here, you’ll have a hit film, my boy.” He was right, but Grade would not be swayed, even after “Good Friday” floored the critics at the 1980 Edinburgh Film Festival. Producer Barry Hanson, though, was encouraged by its reception and stole the movie from the cutting room and began making the rounds, even taking out a full-page ad in Screen International, the UK version of Variety, asking prospective buyers to call his office. Grade’s asking price was a million pounds.
(1) Back from New York, Harold looks over the plans for the Docklands with his right-hand man Jeff (Derek Thompson). (2&3) Harold’s mother (Rudy Head) leaves his yacht and attends the Good Friday service at the Church of Our Lady, where she kisses the feet of Jesus. (3&4) Harold greets New York Mafioso Charlie (Eddie Constantine), who is in London to finalize the deal, and they have champagne with Harold’s girlfriend Victoria (Helen Mirren).
Long story short, HandMade got the film for 750,000 pounds, financing the transaction from the profits of its first film, “Monty Python’s Life of Brian,” which – and you have to love the irony – Grade’s brother, EMI Chief Executive Bernard Delfont, rejected after reading the script.
If you’ve never seen the film, you’re in for a treat. Without question, “The Long Good Friday” is one of Britain’s greatest gangster films, a list that includes “Sexy Beast,” “Layer Cake,” “Eastern Promises,” “Brighton Rock,” “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels,” “Mona Lisa” (also starring Hoskins), and the greatest of them all, Michael Caine’s “Get Carter.”
In his breakout role, Hoskins (“Who Framed Roger Rabbit”) plays Harold Shand, the powerful East End crime boss who has big plans to develop the London Docklands. He’s just returned from New York, where he’s made a deal with the Mafia, when all hell breaks loose. His associates are being murdered and he just dodges an explosion at the pub he owns. But he refuses to see the big picture and instead tries ferreting things out in his own brutal way.
Hoskins’ nuanced performance was likened to James Cagney’s in “The Public Enemy” and Edward G. Robinson’s in “Little Caesar,” and Mirren is every bit his equal as Victoria, Shand’s mistress. The role was originally one-dimensional but, Sellers writes, Mirren and director John Mackenzie (“The Fourth Protocol”) saw her as strong and powerful in her own right, not an appendage.
The supporting cast, which includes future 007 Pierce Brosnan, is also excellent. And the story, because it plays against type, couldn’t feel more authentic. Two reasons why: Screenwriter and one-time journalist Barrie Keeffe (“Sus”) witnessed the rise of the notorious Kray brothers and Mackenzie made it a point to steer clear of London’s film clichés.
(1&2) Harold tells his investors, “I’m not a politician. I’m a businessman with a sense of history … This is the decade in which London will become Europe’s capital.” (3) After a car bomb kills his driver, Harold breaks the news to Victoria, Jeff and his muscle Razors (P.H. Moriarty). (4&5) Harold’s best friend Colin is killed in Belfast by an IRA hitman (Pierce Brosnan).
VIDEO/AUDIO
Arrow Video’s 4K restoration, sourced from the original 35mm camera negative (1.85:1 aspect ratio) and approved by cinematographer Phil Meheux (“Casino Royale”), was handled by London-based Silver Salt Restoration. The results aren’t consistently on par with Arrow’s recent 4K restoration of the exceptional Ray Liotta-Jason Patric crime drama “Narc,” and while the Dolby Vision and HDR10 grading are solid, the picture sometimes looks flat with subdued colors. The movie was encoded onto a 100 GB disc, with a video bitrate that runs at 75-95 Megabits per second.
Still, the grain was left intact and there are enough moments when the detail pops. And compared to earlier releases, this latest version of “The Long Good Friday” is a significant improvement.
As for the audio, the mono track was remastered from the original mag reels and a Dolby Atmos mix was created from the original DME reels. Both are fine. There’s no competition between the dialogue, gunfire, explosions, and Francis Monkman’s tone-setting score.
(1&2) Setting out to quash the violence, Harold strong-arms Erroll (Paul Barber), one of his dealers, for information. (3-6) When a bomb goes off in a pub he owns, Harold arms his crew and tells them to bring the suspects to an abattoir. (7) Parky (Dave King), a Scotland Yard officer on Harold’s payroll, gets his marching orders.
EXTRAS
Arrow has collected a bunch, all of them from the archives and covering all the bases.
In his 2002 commentary, Mackenzie discusses how the story evolved from eight different drafts – at one point he laid the scripts on the floor and cherry-picked. The 2006 documentary “Bloody Business: The Making of The Long Good Friday” touches on every step from development to release. Also included are the feature “Hands Across the Ocean,” which compares scenes from the UK version with how they were re-voiced for the international release, a Q&A with Hoskins and Mackenzie, interviews with cast and crew, and a foldout poster with new artwork.
Just don’t pass on the 43-page collector’s booklet, which rivals any from the standard-setting Criterion Collection. The Sellers excerpt goes into the film’s continuing influence, how Mackenzie wanted it to begin and end, and its reception in America. Critic Judith Crist, for one, described it as “the best gangster movie since ‘The Godfather.’”
“The Long Good Friday,” by Mark Duguid, a senior creator at the British Film Institute National Archive, is must-reading, too. He goes into great detail about how the movie captured the political, social, economic, and structural changes that swept Britain when Margaret Thatcher settled into 10 Downing Street. He calls it “one of the defining accounts of the Thatcher era.”
The booklet also includes a Cockney Rhyming Slang Glossary that was tacked onto the opening of the American theatrical prints to make the dialogue more coherent (i.e., “bung” means “bribe” across the pond) and a sampling of reviews from 1980 and ’81.
SIDENOTE: The Criterion Collection is releasing “The Long Good Friday” in September. Sourced from the same 4K master, it will include a 1080p disc and a second Blu-ray with some of the same extras, plus the 2019 documentary “An Accidental Studio,” about the early years of HandMade Films.
– Craig Shapiro
Carol, whose husband was killed driving Colin to Belfast, dresses down Harold at the cemetery.
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