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List Price: $14.98Amazon.com's Price: $6.49 You Save: $8.49 (57%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 1.77:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Brand: STARZ HOME ENTERTAINMENT
EAN: 0013131234299
Format: Color, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
Label: Starz / Anchor Bay
Manufacturer: Starz / Anchor Bay
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Starz / Anchor Bay
Region Code: 1
Release Date: April 04, 2006
Running Time: 109 minutes
Sales Rank: 19159
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
Theatrical Release Date: April 02, 1982
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Editorial Review:
Description:
Academy Award® nominee Bob Hoskins delivers a ferocious performance as mobster Harold Shand, the all-powerful boss of the London underworld. But on the day he is about to close the ultimate deal with an American crime family, Shand’s empire suddenly — and literally — begins to explode around him. Who would dare attack Britain’s most ruthless gangster? How far will he go to find the truth? And what is the deadly secret behind the havoc of THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY? Oscar® nominee Helen Mirren (GOSFORD PARK, CALIGULA), tough guy icon Eddie Constantine (ALPHAVILLE), and Pierce Brosnan (in one of his first film roles) co-star in this now-classic crime drama that critics compare to THE GODFATHER and SCARFACE as one of the greatest gangster films of all time.
Amazon.com essential video:
Intricately plotted and smartly paced, this gangster saga clicks as whodunit, social satire, and explosive thriller. The piece is crowned by Bob Hoskins's career-making turn as a London mobster courting respectability and Helen Mirren's subtly detailed performance as his upper-crust mistress. Cockney wiseguy Harold Shand is a would-be burgher whose domination of the city's underworld stems from his shrewdness as a mediator and his skill at harnessing political and economic clout. As Easter approaches, he's poised to launch an aggressive real estate development scheme along the depressed Thames waterfront when all hell breaks loose: a trusted lieutenant is brutally murdered, Shand's mother is nearly killed in a car bombing, one of his pubs is blown apart, and the visiting American don crucial to the pending deal is quickly growing wary.
Barrie Keeffe's original screenplay keeps the viewer a step ahead of Shand, providing us with a telling but teasingly incomplete glimpse of the misstep by his underlings that has set chaos loose. At the same time, Keeffe underlines the bourgeois pretensions of the rough-hewn, barrel-chested Shand, how the elegant Victoria (Mirren) helps serve those ambitions, and the myriad parallels between Shand's minions and the local politicians and police only too willing to join in his scheme. Tart, funny dialogue and alternately playful and pungent Eastertide imagery complete Keeffe's shrewd design--two key scenes, in a meat locker and a warehouse, invoke the Crucifixion itself.
Even with lesser performances, the script and John Mackenzie's solid direction would make The Long Good Friday a keeper, but Hoskins's explosive portrait of Shand and his descent toward brutal revenge elevates the film into the very front rank, earning admiring comparisons to The Godfather, Scarface, GoodFellas, and other classics of that genre. On DVD, Criterion's new digital transfer restores more than just the widescreen aspect ratio--the film has never looked better, even if an occasionally muddy sound mix survives to make the thick Cockney accents a challenge to decipher. --Sam Sutherland
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Important movie to see - but it does not live up to the hype
The Long Good Friday, considered one of the best British gangster flicks, takes the classic story of hubristic downfall and sets it in late-seventies London. Bob Hoskins plays Harold Shand, a gangland kingpin trying to "go legit" by investing in some shorefront property which will one day host the Olympics. After a trip across the Atlantic to meet with his American gangster counterparts, he brings them back to East London where he hopes to convince them to invest with him in the shorefront property. ... Read More
Rating:  - Boring
The best thing about this film is the soundtrack. 79 Euro disco and hypnotic psyche prog rock. I give the sounds track 5 stars.
The movie itself. Not so good. Unless you like boring. none of the characters are sympathetic or fascinating. theres a lot of dead air where nothings is going on. the violence is sudden sadistic and revolting, and very rare. theres not much sense of impending doom or walls closing in. theres an obvious shakespear influence - but its no where close to that ... Read More
Rating: - The world's your oyster... Until it isn't.
Refusal to adapt, refusal to comprehend... This is the story of a 'big time' London crime-lord's fall -- at the hands of his own ignorance.
Hoskins and Mirren deliver the filmic goods, to their credit. *Pierce Brosnan* makes the scene with a signature feral gleam already a-twinkling in his eyes, and that's worth seeing. That gleam will still be in his eyes decades later while playing the leading man (with Davis and Kinnear) in The Matador.
On the other hand, the soundtrack is ... Read More
Rating:  - Who Lit The Fuse That Tore Harold's World Apart?
"What I'm looking for is someone who can contribute to what England has given to the world: culture, sophistication, genius. A little bit more than an 'ot dog, know what I mean?" Harold
Harold played by Bob Hoskins starts his Good Friday anticipating the day ahead of him. His plans include a large party on his yacht for a group of monied business men and a couple of men from New York. His plan is to tie up a massive real estate deal. The 1988 Olympics are coming to town and he plans to convert ... Read More
Rating:  - Great Movie British Masterpiece
This movie is excellent from the cast of actors through the plot and the realistic brutality that is far more shocking for it's realism than many of the movie scenes that almost glorify the act of killing and the crazed manner in which people die,that is all to frequently seen in movies of this ilk.
The stone cold realism of someone being stabbed in the swimming pool shower scene, in this movie carried out by a very young Pierce Brosnan is so much more disturbing for the cold quick and mechanical taking ... Read More
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Copyright © 2003-2008 Gunnar Bengtsson, Poetry Connection. All Rights Reserved.
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Brand: STARZ HOME ENTERTAINMENT
EAN: 0013131234299
Format: Color, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
Label: Starz / Anchor Bay
Manufacturer: Starz / Anchor Bay
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Starz / Anchor Bay
Region Code: 1
Release Date: April 04, 2006
Running Time: 109 minutes
Sales Rank: 19159
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
Theatrical Release Date: April 02, 1982