Challenge Week 46: The Long Good Friday

Gangsters are very murdery, I just want to get that out there.

In this breakthrough film for Bob Hoskins, he plays a crime boss who seems to have everything going for him – his properties are making money, he’s about to make a big deal with some Americans, and he’s sitting pretty on top of his empire. Until his associates and friends start getting killed by who knows who for no apparent reason. I mean, there’s kind of always a reason when you’re a gangster, but, you know. Hoskins goes on a somewhat bewildered rampage to find out what’s going on before his whole operation is dismantled all in a single day.

I don’t really have any complaints about this movie – Hoskins is really good, Helen Mirren is fantastic as his girl who might just intuit more than he does about the situation. I’ve hardly seen her in anything when she was young, but I have got to start seeking more out. So no real complaints, but it didn’t do a whole lot for me, either. It was just kind of there.

Stats and stuff…

1980, UK
directed by John Mackenzie, written by Barrie Keeffe
starring Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren, Derek Thompson, P.H. Moriarty

I’m ranking all my Challenge films on Flickchart (as I do all the films I see), a movie-ranking website that asks you to choose your favorite between two movies until it builds a ranked list of your favorites. Just for fun, I will average out the rankings and keep a running tally of whose recommendations rank the highest. When you add a film to Flickchart, it pits it against films already on your chart to see where it should fall. Here’s how The Long Good Friday entered my chart:

The Long Good Friday > Sylvia Scarlett
The Long Good Friday < The Shining
The Long Good Friday < Manhattan Murder Mystery
The Long Good Friday > The Phantom of the Opera (2004)
The Long Good Friday < Camelot
The Long Good Friday < The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T
The Long Good Friday < The Parent Trap (1961)
The Long Good Friday < Words and Music
The Long Good Friday > Life of Brian
The Long Good Friday > Blood and Sand (1922)
The Long Good Friday > A Wild Hare
The Long Good Friday < Clash by Night