British Gangsters: The Long Good Friday (Dir John Mackenzie, 1h54m, 1980)
In 2024, Empire Magazine named The Long Good Friday the greatest British Gangster film of all time. Brighton Rock came seventh, Get Carter second. Much like Get Carter , The Long Good Friday has long been imitated by lesser films, countless would-be hard men beholden to the film's depiction of the gangster, Harold Shand (the late great Bob Hoskins) heading a criminal empire at the beginning of the very early 1980s in London, as his attempts to consolidate power with the help of the American Mafia and to legitimise his business, come under threat from enemies within and without, as the city threatens to fall into open gang warfare. Once again, we return to the London of the 1960s and 1970s: Barrie Keeffe, a journalist by trade for the now defunct The Stratford Express , begins his literary career. His first novel is published in 1969, his first script for television in 1972, and his first script for the stage in 1973; Keefee eventually leaves journalism to take up being...
