#26: The Long Good Friday
Hi,
I’m ready for Winter break, my babies. Gonna be so fun to not have any homework and to be able to talk on the landline until midnight. And then maybe there will be snow and we’ll get an extra day or two off!
P.S. When I get my cedar garland, it’s gonna be over for all y’all.
#26: The Long Good Friday
Director: John Mackenzie
Country: United Kingdom
Year: 1979
Runtime: 114 minutes
Language: English
**As always, this post contains spoilers**
The movie starts with a scene that was one of those scenes where you just have to trust that sometime later you will understand what is happening/what’s happened. BUT Stephanie from the future who has seen the whole movie understands what happened so she/me/I am going to let you in like 90 minutes earlier into what happened.
A guy named Colin (Paul Freeman) is in the backseat of a cab with a briefcase full of money. He pockets some of it before delivering it to some guys in the backroom of a bar. While Colin is flirting with a guy at the bar, the guys with the briefcase, after realizing money is missing, are attacked and killed.
Soon after, the driver of Colin’s cab is also killed. Colin gets away.
GOT IT?
Now we’re at lunch with two Bri-ish guys in London, Jeff (Derek Thompson) and Harris (Bryan Marshall), who are “business associates.” After Harris leaves, a woman in an all-black outfit (movie code for widow) shows up, spits on Jeff, and leaves.
GOT IT? You got it.
Bob Hoskins (Harold Shand) lol I mean: Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) touches down at Heathrow airport in a suit. This is when Josh tells me he once read an Onion headline about a new show called America’s Next Top Bob Hoskins and we paused the movie and I googled it for several minutes and couldn’t find it and I’m sort of wondering if he made it up.
Harold and his girlfriend, Victoria (Helen Mirren, who is OWNING the late 70s skirt suit), hang out on their yacht. They are very fancy and rich.
Because when I don’t know what is going on narratively, I feel unsafe, I ask Josh to explain what is happening because it’s been 15 minutes and I’m still just swimming in a soup of British accents (which are absurd and this is not talked about enough). He says, “Some American contact is coming over and they’re making arrangements for it. And they’re part of some syndicate.” We then had to Google what a syndicate was (it’s just a group of people).
There is a church service because it’s Good Friday. At the service, people are coming up to a crucifix statue held by altar boys, bending down and kissing its feet, and then an altar boy is wiping the feet after every kiss. Catholics, is this a real thing? As he’s leaving the church, a guy is blown up in his car.
Colin, the guy who delivered the suitcase in the beginning, is swimming at a public indoor pool. He’s making eyes at a YOUNG PIERCE BROSNAN.
After some flirting, he approaches him in the shower, but YOUNG PIERCE BROSNAN is not there to hook up.
He’s there to kill Colin. Which he does, with a knife to the belly. I still did not know what was happening but you bet your ass I *gasped.*
OKAY vignettes are over.
Harold and Victoria are welcoming all sorts of guests onto their yacht for a party. The American business associate, Charlie (Eddie Constantine) shows up with his friend named Tony, both from New Jersey. Of course.
Harold gives a speech about this big, important new business venture. It’s very vague, but again, DO the details matter in movies? GOOD QUESTION.
During the party, Harold gets a call about both of the deaths: the guy blown up at church, who’s name is apparently Eric (RIP Eric) and Colin, who was stabbed at the pool. He’s so startled by this news, he breaks a brandy glass in his hand. Eric and Colin are two of Harold’s men and guess WHAT Harold is in the mob in some capacity. !!! I apologize in advance for saying “his mean” and “his guys” so much because I couldn’t tell any of them apart and again: it actually didn’t matter! You must only remember Jeff, the one who was spit on in the beginning.
Josh said, “It’s as though someone is trying to strike at his criminal syndicate.”
Harold is VERY upset by all of this, crying about how he and Colin were in the army together and how gentle he was. Of course I think of The Sopranos because that is my fictional mafia touchstone and I have to say...I don’t know if Harold could make it in The Sopranos world. Or maybe I’m just jaded about the mob. Which is a RIDICULOUS sentence.
It turns out there was also a bomb found at one of Harold’s casinos. Harold and his men are trying to put together who it could be attacking them or why. I guess Harold has been technically out of the mob for a decade and is trying to become a legit businessman, SO he also has to look legit to his American guests, who he is trying to woo.
One of Harold’s men says, “Who’s big enough to take you on?” Which I am….not buying Bob Hoskins as a mob boss at this point, okay?? He’s funny and hysterical (not haha hysterical, but hysterical like a 19th century woman) and just sort of...corny? IDK. Change my mind, I challenged this movie.
Harold and his men go looking for the perpetrators in different neighborhoods around London, including one guy they threaten with a huge knife while he’s naked in the kitchen and they cut him right across his naked butt! But he doesn’t know anything.
As Harold arrives to a meeting with the Americans in tow, the bar he owns in London where they’re meeting blows up right in front of them!! NOT A GOOD LOOK. Victoria covers for him and says it was probably just a gas explosion. One time my car was really messy and a guy I had a crush on asked me for a ride and I was unprepared and I had to scoop all of the old mail and cups and stuff into the backseat so he could sit and it was really embarrassing so I feel like I can relate.
Luckily no one was killed, but the guy working at the bar says the guys who were responsible looked Irish. One of Harold’s guys tells him if they’re Irish and part of the IRA, they’re really fucked because the IRA does NOT play by the same rules.
Harold calls a meeting with what looks to be the entire mob (?) and a table full of guns. They all grab one and leave with the instruction to scare some of these Irish dudes.
Victoria is out to dinner with the American businessmen, Charlie and Tony, trying to save the day from the bombing/“gas explosion.” They say if she doesn’t tell them the truth, they’re going to leave London with no deal. So she tells them everything.
“What is this...a gang war…?” They ask.
She saves it quickly, though, saying that because he’s working on such a huge business deal that someone is just after him. She’s good.
The restaurant they’re in is super 70s with lots of mirrors. Josh says, “Can you imagine going into a restaurant that looked like that?....also, can you imagine going into a restaurant….?” And we LAUGHED AND LAUGHED because the answer to that is HARDLY because the last 9 months in America has fucked my brain.
The Americans are going to give Harold 24 hours to resolve their problems or they’re leaving with no deal which is like...is this amateur hour? I know they know this is mob shit and don’t they know mob shit goes on for literal generations?
After dinner, Jeff comes on to Victoria in the corner of an elevator, which is my personal hell. It seems like she might be into it but then he says,
“I want to lick every inch of you.”
…
And as they arrive at her floor, she says, “Saved by the bell.” This isn’t a very important part of the plot, but I like taking any opportunity I can to do PSAs for men about what you should never do. Here’s another one!
While Harold and his guys are at a meat packing plant, hanging old associates of his up by their ankles and questioning them, another one of his main guys shows up and tells him it’s the IRA who’s behind all of the attacks. They analyzed the bomb left at the casino that never went off. It’s Irish! We’re getting somewhere!
The next morning, Victoria tells him that one of his men, Harris, told her that Jeff “is the real bastard.” So now Harold is sus of Jeff (can sus be a verb?) and calls someone. He remembers this story he heard about a widow spitting on Jeff (remember??) and he wants to talk to her. He meets her, fittingly, at a cemetery because that’s where widows live.
She starts yelling at him, calling him a bastard and he just slaps her!!! He has no idea what she’s talking about. She tells him her husband was Colin’s driver the night he took the briefcase to that bar; he was murdered. The deal was set up by Jeff, which is why she spit on him at that cafe. It is BREAKING NEWS to Harold that this deal ever went down!
He meets Jeff, who is wearing boot cut jeans and I’m feeling scared/sad that this might be the last outfit he wears, on the yacht. Harold is acting V casual and cool which is scary and I buy him as a mob boss for the first time. Jeff is almost as nervous as I am.
He asks Jeff about the driver who was killed. Jeff is immediately busted and tells him what happened.
So, Jeff got Colin to deliver $$ to Belfast on behalf of the IRA. But two MAJ things went wrong: Colin stole $3,000 from the stash he was meant to deliver and 3 of the IRA men were killed. Sooooo now they’re getting revenge on Harold and his whole crew.
They get into a fight about how Harold wants to totally crush the IRA and Jeff tells him he doesn’t have the power and then next thing I know there’s a broken bottle and Jeff’s neck is spurting blood and then next thing HE knows, he’s dead on the floor of Harold’s yacht. Whoopsy daisy!
Victoria shows up to the yacht and Harold emerges screaming and covered in blood. So now I’m not buying it again….he’s SO fragile which is human, obviously, but it’s also….not very mobby??
He cuddles Victoria in the back of the car as they drive back to their house so he can take a slow, tormented shower. To be fair and empathetic, Harold HAS been out of the mob biz for a decade so I get that he may have lost his touch, but I guess I prefer my mobsters only cry over ducks and race horses.
In a very weird high-brow low-brow box suite at a car racing event, Harold offers one of the drivers, who is part of the IRA, 60 grand. As he’s counting it, two of Harold’s men enter and kill all the IRA guys. OKAY!
In a great mood, Harold arrives to a meeting at a hotel with the Americans to let them know everything’s all good and handled. Unfortunately, they’re preparing to leave because they’re spooked (duh). Charlie says, “bombs blowing up...mass murders...it’s a hang up of mine.” Samesies. Harold calls them cowards and does like a leave before I’m left/I’m gonna be a STAR, YOU’LL SEE routine and walks out.
He hails a cab and in the passenger front seat is YOUNG PIERCE BROSNAN holding a gun.
He sees Victoria has also been kidnapped in another cab. The IRA has gotten the last word, it seems. Harold looks terrified in the backseat as the cab drives on.
THE END
Endings like this, where you know what’s going to happen off camera, are SO unsettling and evocative to me. It’s like those unspoken moments IRL when everyone knows what everyone is thinking but no one can say it. So eerie! Harold and Victoria are completely dead right now.
I don’t know, this movie was good I guess. I like the concept of a not totally committed/sensitive mob boss but the movie didn’t give the space for that to feel like a fully realized and intentional choice as much as a very soft suggestion that ultimately just made me not buy him as a mob boss. The accents were bonk and Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren are SO good, so, worth it for that!
Up next is the first of two 1970’s horror films, Flesh for Frankenstein, directed by Paul Morrissey. AM I looking forward to watching two horror films in a row when I sort of just want to watch Dawson’s Creek and America’s Next Top Model back to back until the end of the year? No. Will I do it? Yes. Can I do both? ;)
See you there!
XOXO,
Steph