BEFORE: Pierce Brosnan carries over one more time, from "No Escape", and this one is practically the first film he ever appeared in - his character doesn't even have a name here, he just played "Irishman #1". From humble beginnings, I guess.
OK, well, I have to explain now how I got to THIS one, and it's got very little to do with Pierce Brosnan. Late last year I watched "Mona Lisa" with Bob Hoskins, which was a popular indie film made by the Handmade Films Studio. Right after that, I watched "An Accidental Studio", a documentary about Handmade Films itself, and I learned that the principal backer for those great British indie films was none other than George Harrison, former Beatle and part-time wanna-be film executive producer.
The documentary featured clips from a lot of the Handmade Films releases, "Mona Lisa" of course, also "Withnail and I", which was my outro film (and thus led me to Christmas films via Richard E. Grant) also great films like "Monty Python's Life of Brian" and "Time Bandits", and terrible films like "Shanghai Surprise" and "Water". But also in there were clips from "The Long Good Friday", and it looked like another interesting film that I might like to watch - and coincidentally that one was also available on HBO Max, so there you go, I put it on the list.
At the time, I had no idea when I could get to it - I had no slots left for it in 2022, even though I COULD have fit it in between two films with Helen Mirren - "The Nutcracker and the Four Realms" and "The Hundred-Foot Journey". Damn, but then I wouldn't have had room for the second Christmas film... OK, so now it's five months later, and look at the luck, I can use it here to connect the Pierce Brosnan chain with the Mother's Day/Weekend films, which start tomorrow. See, it's like it was meant to be, these things have a funny way of working out.
I know, I know, it's not Good Friday today, that was last month - but at least it's A Friday.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Mona Lisa" (Movie #4,295)
THE PLOT: An up-and-coming gangster is tested by the insurgence of an unknown, very powerful threat.
AFTER: I don't think this film is on that list of "100 Films You Must See Before You Die" (I'll check when I get home tonight) but it's for sure on the list of "The 100 Best British Films". It's set in the gangster underworld and political scene of late 1970's London, and in so many ways, that was a different time. For one thing, you could apparently smoke just about anywhere, in the pubs, in the hotels, in bed. Everybody in this film smokes all the time. Also, this was a time when you could round up a bunch of notorious thugs and hang them by their feet in a meat locker and beat them senseless until you got the information out of them that you were looking for. Or not, I guess, but I don't think anybody could do this today, not even criminals.
Also, there was this thing called the IRA, the Irish Republican Army, that features very strongly into the plot here. We sort of covered this in the movie "Belfast", but from the Irish point of view - but even in London the IRA had some influence, some London gangsters were apparently diverting funds up to Belfast for the cause, and if you crossed the IRA, man you were in some trouble, they'd blow up your car without a moment's hesitation - with you in it, of course.
Bob Hoskins plays Harold Shand, a mid-level gangster who's got some investors (American mafa) visiting London, and a plan to turn the Docklands into an Olympic stadium - which is a strange plan for 1979, because London didn't host the Olympics again until 2012. I guess he's running a really long con? But then when his top delivery guy gets stabbed in a community swimming pool and his mate Colin gets blowed up real good, Shand sets out to find out who's trying to take his organization down, just when it's on the cusp of this really great 33-year Olympic stadium plan.
This leads to the LONG part of the title - it's a LONG Good Friday that's needed to figure this out, and the fact that one of Harold's men gets nailed to the floor, almost crucifixion-style, well, that just adds to the Easter Motif, don't it? Maybe that should have been a tip-off that whoever did this was hard-core Catholic... Meanwhile, Shand's girlfriend, Victoria, suspects that his right-hand man, Jeff, knows more about what happened than he's letting on. So when Harold confronts Jeff about who did what in Belfast, well, let's just say things get a bit out of hand. See ya, Jeff.
All roads seem to lead to Belfast, and city councilman Harris is the likely connection. Shand goes with him up to a meeting that's set up during a demolition derby race, and well, there's a set-up, and there's quite a bit of demolition. Much more than expected, let's say. Shand brings 60 grand with him to make up for the fact that his guy skimmed 5 grand from the take, and to make things right again - but he's actually got no intention of giving up the money. Good luck explaining to the police how a guy was shot, fell three stories, then got run over by a car and then blown up. The forensics alone is going to take months to sort out.
All right, that's all squared away, so it's back to London and the business of building that stadium - only it turns out you don't pull a fast one on the Irish like that, not without them pulling another fast one on you. Maybe THIS is why the Olympics weren't held in London in 1984. Oh, well, London's loss was L.A.'s gain, right? Only cities never seem to turn a profit when they host the Olympics, it always seems to be a money-losing proposition, spending billions to build stadiums and housing and event spaces, only to make a few millions in tourism, which makes you wonder why cities are so eager to do it in the first place. I have no clue.
In case you ever wondered if there were ever a movie that starred the guy who played Belloq in "Raiders of the Lost Ark", has a future James Bond in a shower scene and also has the guy who played Terry the cook on "Fawlty Towers", this would be that movie. All right? Now let's get ready for Mother's Day.
Also starring Bob Hoskins (last seen in "An Accidental Studio"), Helen Mirren (last seen in "The Hundred-Foot Journey"), Dave King (last seen in "Reds"), Bryan Marshall (last seen in "Alfie" (1966)), Derek Thompson, Eddie Constantine, Paul Freeman (last seen in "Centurion"), P.H. Moriarty (last seen in "Quadrophenia"), Stephen Davies, Brian Hall, Alan Ford (last seen in "Cockneys vs. Zombies"), Paul Barber, Pauline Melville (last seen in "Mona Lisa"), Patti Love (last seen in "Woman in Gold"), Nigel Humphreys, Karl Howman, Gillian Taylforth, George Coulouris (last seen in "For Whom the Bell Tolls"), Trevor Laird (last seen in "Cruella"), Roy Alon, Tony Rohr (last seen in "Leap Year"), Alan Devlin (ditto), Daragh O'Malley (last seen in "Withnail & I"), Leo Dolan, Dexter Fletcher (last seen in "Doom"), Kevin McNally (last seen in "Cry Freedom"), Charles Cork, Dave Ould, Paul Kember (last seen in "An American Werewolf in London"), Bill Moody (last seen in "Love Actually"), Bruce Alexander (last seen in "Into the Storm"), Georgie Phillips, Mary Sheen, Billy Cornelius, Michael Ryan (last seen in "The Perfect Score"), Rob Walker, Nick Stringer (last seen in "Oliver Twist"), Robert Hamilton, James Ottaway,
RATING: 5 out of 10 sides of beef
No comments:
Post a Comment