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The Long Good Friday Gets Its Due on Criterion 4K

Photo: courtesy The Criterion Collection.

The Long Good Friday may be one of the oldest titles in The Criterion Collection—it’s spine #26, one of the company’s early LaserDisc and first DVD releases from way back in 1997—but it’s richly deserving of this lively new upgrade, a 4K UHD three-disc special edition with a bright new remaster and several excellent special features. The film is today every bit as spunky and vital as is its sparkplug lead Bob Hoskins’ performance, a work that far exceeds its generic crime-drama origins as a pithy commentary on 1970s Britain’s aspirations and limitations. In this remastered special edition it makes for a comprehensive experience, a cinephile’s delight, and a delightfully violent thriller of a film.

Bob Hoskins as gangster Harold Shand and Helen Mirren as Victoria look up at the sky in <em>The Long Good Friday</em>.
Bob Hoskins as gangster Harold Shand and Helen Mirren as Victoria in The Long Good Friday. Photo: courtesy The Criterion Collection.

The Long Good Friday had at best modest ambitions to start. Former journalist Barrie Keefe’s script went through several changes once director John Mackenzie was assigned the project, at first slated as a television feature for Sir Lew Grade’s ITC Entertainment. But with Hoskins and Helen Mirren aboard, Mackenzie’s violent, political vision was too much for television—and for Grade, who dumped the project wholesale. Left for dead for a time, it was eventually championed by Monty Pythoner Eric Idle, who brought it the attention of former Beatle George Harrison, whose Handmade Films made its theatrical release possible.

If behind the scenes Mackenzie had his troubles, on screen the troubles are all Hoskins’. An opening scene (nearly too complex to process until more of the plot unfolds later) sets in motion a suitcase filled with money, a double-cross, a mysterious stranger, a dead cabbie and his grieving widow, and several of the protagonist’s henchmen and allies. But the second Hoskins appears as gangster-going-good Harold Shand, confidently striding through Heathrow Airport to the thumping jaunt of the film’s Francis Monkman theme, The Long Good Friday is all his.

Shand is a London mobster with a shadowy past and big ambitions on the cusp of closing a major real estate deal with funding from the American Mafia. It’s a deal that will lend him a respectability he craves and set him and his beloved England on a new course as a restored world power. He’s not shy about those ambitions, boasting to his tony yacht guests of his plans, and his partner Victoria (Mirren) seems his equal, an intelligent and savvy co-conspirator with whom he can share his love and his empire. At several turns, though, Shand’s organization is rocked by a string of violent attacks that torture and kill several of his lieutenants, and he, in turn, embarks on his own quest to learn who is responsible and why.

Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) stares as several of his crime mob are discovered hanged by their feet in a meat-packing plant.
Bob Hoskins as Harold Shand in The Long Good Friday. Photo: courtesy The Criterion Collection.

The answer turns out to be surprisingly complex and gives The Long Good Friday its considerable ideological weight. Though it is unambiguously a crime film with a savage mobster at its center and unflinching acts of violence all about, The Long Good Friday is also a rumination on Shand’s England’s late-century malaise, a country on the cusp of its disastrous Thatcher-era policies that would render it less of a world power and more of a curious footnote with a long history. Mackenzie’s direction taps into the powder keg of Britain’s late-seventies conflicts via Shand’s ambitions and Mirren’s cautions in a way that lets the film become about far more than whether a gangster gets his way.

Deftly directed with layered performances from both Hoskins and Mirren and several small delights along the way—including a shirtless, unabashedly queer-coded young terrorist thug played by no other than a future James Bond in his screen debut—The Long Good Friday is crime film at its best. Its crimes occur for a reason beyond its protagonist’s ambitions, perhaps in part because of them, but as he will learn in a memorable final scene, ones that are way, way beyond his control or comprehension.

Bob Hoskins as gangster Harold Shand and Helen Mirren as Victoria embrace in a car in The Long Good Friday.
Bob Hoskins as Harold Shand and Helen Mirren as Victoria in The Long Good Friday. Photo: courtesy The Criterion Collection.

The Long Good Friday is presented here in an especially crisp new 4K digital restoration created from the original 35mm negative and approved by director of photography Phil Méheux, its uncompressed monaural soundtrack remastered from the original 35mm magnetic tracks, with all materials contributed by Handmade Films through the British Film Institute. The special edition consists of one 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays: the first with the introduction and feature film in SDR and the second with the remaining special features. Subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing are provided for the feature film on both the UHD and Blu-ray disc but, sadly, for none of the special features and not for the commentary track—a continuing oversight I hope at some point Criterion will begin to correct.

Special Features

Criterion cover artwork for the 4K special edition featuring a close-up of Bob Hoskins as Harold Shand.
Photo: courtesy The Criterion Collection.

Audio commentary with director John Mackenzie. The director’s commentary, recorded in 2002 for the Anchor Bay DVD release, is available on both the 4K UHD disc and the first of the package’s two Blu-ray discs. Mackenzie is clear and forthright in his comments, recalling the film’s pre-production, production, and, to a lesser degree, its reception and reputation. At times, he will lose himself in the minutiae of the shoot, for instance recalling that the pool scene was shot using three different pools before seeming to realize it featured the screen debut of one of cinema’s most recognizable faces in Pierce Brosnan. While I would have loved to have had access to a new track from an Ashley Clark or Ryan Gilbey and a perspective other than the film’s director, Mackenzie’s comments are worth the listen and a valuable addition to the package.

Introduction to the film by Ashley Clark. Now Criterion’s curatorial director, Clark focuses this brisk, informative précis to the film predominantly on its quintessentially British character, the breakout lead performances of Hoskins and Mirren, and the debut of George Harrison’s Handmade Films. One of the only special features to be able to look back at a pre-Thatcher England from a post-Brexit perspective, it’s a near-ideal introduction to The Long Good Friday‘s unique character. This intro appears on one of two Blu-ray discs alongside the feature film. 6 minutes, in English, no SDH available.

An Accidental Studio. This feature-length 2019 documentary on Handmade Films makes for an excellent deep dive into ex-Beatle Harrison’s foray into film production. Itself handsomely shot and deftly edited, the documentary charts Harrison’s fascination with filmmaking dating back to his time on the set of the groundbreaking A Hard Day’s Night and into his later partnerships with Terry Gilliam and others. There are archival interviews with Harrison, who passed away in 2001, and others, and newly-shot pieces with co-founder Denis O’Brien, collaborators Gilliam, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Bob Hoskins, John Mackenzie, writer Barrie Keeffe, production head (and Elton John percussionist) Ray Cooper, and more, charting the story of Hand Made films from its inception through its most storied productions—The Life of Brian, The Long Good Friday, Time Bandits, and Mona Lisa—into its troubled times in the 1980s. A wonderful documentary for Beatles or Harrison fans, cinephiles interested in independent production, or fans of British cinema more generally. This and the other special features appears on the second Blu-ray disc. 97 minutes, in English, no SDH available.

Bloody Business. This 2006 documentary about the making of The Long Good Friday features interviews with Mackenzie, producer Barry Hanson, and stars Hoskins, Mirren, and Brosnan, who of course by then had become an international superstar as James Bond in five films from 1997-2002. Production-wise, this featurette is scarcely the equal of the Handmade Films documentary, and it’s clearly more of a traditional public-relations piece than an insightful work of film-studies scholarship, but it’s a treat to hear the film’s stars reminisce about their roles, and there are sufficient insights to make it a worthwhile contribution. 55 minutes, in English, no SDH available.

Barrie Keeffe. This brief 2015 interview with The Long Good Friday‘s writer focuses on the script’s origins—essentially Humphrey Bogart as Cockney gangster in conflict with the IRA—and its pre-production. 8 minutes, in English, no SDH available.

Phil Méheux. A second 2015 interview, this with cinematographer Méheux, reflects on his hiring for The Long Good Friday—originally posited as a television feature film—and the film’s continuously evolving script. 3 minutes, in English, no SDH available.

Hands across the Ocean. This brief 2015 program compares the soundtracks for the UK and U.S. releases, the latter of which was partially revoiced to remove or reduce Hoskins’ and several supporting characters’ Cockney accents—something, it seems, of an exercise in obvious futility. 7 minutes, in English—and “American” English, with selected subtitles.

Note: The Keeffe and Méheux interviews, Mackenzie commentary track, and Bloody Business documentary are all extant on the Arrow UK 4K UHD special edition of The Long Good Friday (which also includes interviews with producer Barry Hanson, first assistant director Simon Hinkly, and assistant art director Carlotta Barrowand).

Also included in The Criterion Collection Three-Disc Special Edition are trailers for the UK and US theatrical releases and a ten-page four color foldout spine insert featuring an excellent essay, “Corporate Governance,” by critic Ryan Gilbey, explicating the film’s pre-Thatcher era contexts and ideologies, with new cover artwork by Eric Skillman.

Aside from the cover art and remastering, only the Clark introduction and the Hand Made films documentary are new to this package, yet Criterion’s assemblage of existing content alongside those new special features make this special edition of The Long Good Friday every bit the equal of Arrow Video’s UK/Region-free disc. Placing the film in its context and fully cognizant of its use and transcendence of the crime-film genre from which it evolves, Criterion’s 4K special edition gives The Long Good Friday its well-deserved due, delivering a powderkeg of a performance from Hoskins—and Mirren, too—in a comprehensive package.

Written by J Paul Johnson

J Paul Johnson is Professor Emeritus of English and Film Studies at Winona (MN) State University. Since retiring in 2021 he publishes Film Obsessive, where he reviews new releases, writes retrospectives, interviews up-and-coming filmmakers, and oversees the site's staff of 25 writers and editors. His film scholarship appears in Women in the Western, Return of the Western (both Edinburgh UP), and Literature/Film Quarterly. An avid cinephile, collector, and curator, his interests range from classical Hollywood melodrama and genre films to world and independent cinemas and documentary.

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