The Long Good Friday

I do a lot of reading of lists and things like that to find interesting movies to watch.  I'm not always in the mood for a great movie (or even a good one), but it's nice to have a little insight into titles that I might otherwise ignore.  That's what brought me to the British Film Institute's 100 "Favourite" Brit flicks of the 20th century.  Many of the films I was familiar with, but The Long Good Friday was the first title (coming in at an impressive #21) that I had never even heard of.  So, with Easter right around the corner, I thought this an appropriate time for a viewing.

Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) is that oh-so-dangerous kind of gangster --- the type that is trying to finally go legit, and therefore has the most to lose.  He has an iron fist on London's organized crime and he has a finger in every dirty little pie (except drugs) in England's greatest city.  Harold has managed to keep the peace between the various criminal groups that he oversees for over a decade, and now (which is in 1979) he is on the cusp of two truly important moves.  He has visiting New York mobsters coming in to possibly give him financing that will allow him to buy up enough (decrepit) London dockyard land and influence enough votes to have London host the 1988 Olympics and build their Olympic town on his land.  The American mobsters get their dirty cash laundered, Harold has a legitimate source of income from the land deals, the city gets a boost of revenue, and all sorts of politicians and policemen get their palms greased.  Best of all, nobody gets killed because it's all mostly legal.  That's better than win-win, it's win-win-win-win-win.  There's just one problem.  On the Good Friday that the American mobsters come to visit, Harold's men start to die in spectacular ways.  His mother's driver is killed by a car bomb, his casino has a bomb in it, two of his best men are found dead; as the day goes on, the bodies and explosions keep piling up.  Who would dare, after a decade of peace, take on the proverbial King Kong of London's criminal underground?  Who could even think of it?  Harold has long since killed his rivals.  Whoever it is, Harold has no problem going to his most savage lengths to find the guilty party.  But what does he do when it is clear that savagery isn't enough?

It's hard to act like a tough thug when you're hanging by a meat hook.

While you might not know the names of the actors in this film, they are all pretty recognizable British actors.  Paul Freeman (Belloq from Raiders of the Lost Ark) has a small, but pivotal, role in the beginning of the movie.  P.H. Moriarty and Alan Ford (the villains from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, respectively) play some of Harold's thugs; Moriarty was pretty impressive as the knife-loving Razors.  Dexter Fletcher (another Lock, Stock alum) makes an early appearance as an ugly child.  Paul Barber (The Full Monty) gets his hands nailed to a floor to make him tell the truth.  Kevin McNally (Johnny's Depp's drunken buddy in all the Pirates movies) has a bit scene in a bar.  Most of these actors had pretty small roles in the film, but most of them have at least one memorable scene.  Heck, Pierce Brosnan, in his first film role, had a major supporting role as a very hairy-chested assassin. 

James Bond: the bathhouse years.

The film belongs to the lead actors, though.  Bob Hoskins is terrific as the street-level thug trying to be a gentleman, especially as that gentlemanly facade is slowly stripped away and we get to see just how brutal he is.  You don't see a whole lot of physically evocative performances from British films in general, but it was all but unheard of in the late-70s/early-80s; the best British films of the time tended to be epic and theatrically acted.  Seeing Hoskins gnashing his teeth together and seething with violence while wearing a fancy suit was a treat.  This is a performance that pre-dates --- and, in some ways, overshadows --- James Gandolfini's Sopranos role by over two decades.  But what sets this movie apart from other gangster movies, at least in the character department, comes from Helen Mirren's portrayal of Harold's girlfriend.  She could have played the typical gangster moll, but (at her insistence, I've heard) her character is smart, sophisticated, and is definitely the brains behind Harold's brawn.  Can you tell me the last time you saw a gangster movie where the lead female role was equal in power to the male lead?  I can't think of any, but you're welcome to try.  This is the youngest I've ever seen Mirren (she was in her mid-thirties at the time), so I was a little surprised to see her as, well...young and pretty.  While her part was definitely a supporting role, I thought her calm and collected smarts stole the scenes she was in.

I'm not too familiar with John Mackenzie's body of work as a director, but he obviously did a pretty good job with the actors here.  I love that the beginning of the film lays out some problems, but doesn't explain them until much later; this might be confusing at first, but I thought that showing what happened, but not hearing the dialogue in most of the scenes or knowing the context of the actions was an interesting (and ultimately rewarding) choice.  I wish I could say the same for some of Mackenzie's other choices.  Many scenes go on too long, adding little or nothing to the overall story and the score, while modern at the time, sounds positively archaic now.  I liked how he handled the actors and assembled the story, but I have to admit that the movie drags at times.

What sets this movie apart from your typical gangster movie is the problem it poses.  The police aren't getting in Harold's way, because he pays them not to.  Politicians aren't making a stink about it, because Harold pays them not to.  Harold's enemies aren't causing all these problems, because they're all dead.  As the enemy is slowly revealed, things start to make sense, especially once the motives for the attacks become apparent.  What I really liked about this movie was how it found an enemy that could take on mobsters and plausibly win.  The script was handled intelligently and it definitely spoke to some of the reality of 1970s Britain.

I will probably watch this again, and I might appreciate it a little more the next time around.  Even if I don't it's still pretty darn good.

Snatch

Most of the time, when there is a heist in a film, it is the focus of the plot.  That makes sense, after all; most normal people don't commit high-stakes armed robbery, so it provides a little escapism for audiences.  Of course, there have been notable films where the robbery was not the focal point, but still an important part of the script.  In the case of Reservoir Dogs, the heist isn't in the movie, but the plot focuses on the aftermath of a robbery gone wrong.  Snatch is a little different, though.  Yes, there is a robbery.  Technically, the same item is stolen several times.  But this is a movie that is more about the awesomeness of incoherent gypsies than it is about any heist.

Snatch is one of those ensemble movies where a dozen or more characters have intersecting plot lines that twist and turn all over the place, so summarizing the plot is perhaps not the best way to describe this movie.  There are only two constants in this plot.  First, New York gangster Avi (Dennis Farina) wants to get his hands on the diamond he hired Frankie Four Fingers (Benicio del Toro) to steal from Antwerp, but he's not the only one who knows that the jewel is in Frankie's possession.  Second, local crime lord Brick Top (Alan Ford) needs competition for his illegal (and known to be crooked) underground boxing matches; he sets his sights on an honest local manager, Turkish (Jason Statham), who needs to deliver a good fight for Brick Top, or quite possibly die a gruesome death.  Everything else feeds into those two seemingly separate plots.

While that actually sums up the plot decently well, I can't review Snatch and not mention the myriad colorful characters sprinkled throughout.  While I wouldn't say that any of these characters are well-developed or sympathetic, most of them are entertaining.  The highlight of the film definitely comes from the "fookin' pikeys," which is a rude British term for Irish Travelers (you know...gypsies); Mickey (Brad Pitt) leads the group of dirty, swindling, and heavy-drinking gamblers, with Jason Flemyng playing his number two.  The pikeys are almost impossible to understand, which adds to their unwashed charm.

The next best characters are probably the duo of Bullet Tooth Tony (Vinnie Jones) and Boris the Blade, AKA Boris the Bullet Dodger (Rade Serbedzija); both are notoriously hard to kill, both are pretty bad-ass, and they each have several memorable moments in the movie.  Beyond them, there is an assortment of lesser characters, like the group of inept criminals hired to rob Frankie Four Fingers (including Robbie Gee and Lennie James), Turkish's partner Tommy (Stephen Graham) and a snitch (Ewen Bremner).

While it is billed as a crime picture, this is really more of a comedy than anything else.  Sure, there's some action, but it is not the focus; the initial diamond heist took about two minutes of film time and even the final boxing match is only about five minutes long.  The characters flash across the screen quickly, as does the plot, with everything slowing down only for jokes.  Unfortunately, many of those jokes aren't very good.  Well, to be fair, they're not real jokes; they're regular dialogue that is supposed to stick out and be funny.  Sometimes, this works out great.  Anything with Brad Pitt speaking is great.  Most of Vinnie Jones' lines are good, especially his explanation for how Boris the Bullet Dodger got his nickname.  Dennis Farina was also very entertaining whenever he got to be overly rude.  But for every great moment, there is at least one joke that truly fails.  They fall into a category that I like to call "repeater jokes."  You have one character saying the same thing (maybe with slight variations) several times, with other characters reacting to it with increasing exasperation; you can inverse the gag, but it's even worse.  Here's an example: Jason Statham asks a guy when the sausages will be done cooking, he is told two minutes; he asks again, and is told two minutes; he asks again and is told five minutes; Jason, frustrated, explains that it was two minutes five minutes ago.  If you're not on the floor with tears in your eyes after reading that, then you agree with me: not funny, guys.  I also found the inept criminals annoying, too, but the repeater jokes are just awful.  They're not funny and they slow the flow of an otherwise fast-paced film.

This was the second film Guy Ritchie directed, and he throws everything he has at the screen.  Slow motion, freeze frames, fast motion, a weird underwater effect, all while moving the camera all over the place.  It makes for a pretty kinetic movie, even when not much is going on, plot-wise.  You can justly critique his style as resembling Attention Deficit Disorder, but as long as the plot is chugging along, his style fits the film.  I'm not quite sure about Ritchie and his handling of actors, though.  He is probably a fun guy to be around, judging from all the actors that recur in his films, but he doesn't have much sense for timing anything but action, as we see when he slows down to tell unfunny jokes.

The acting is mostly entertaining, although nobody is really great in their part.  Brad Pitt is the film's shining performance, managing to be very likable despite being greasy, bearded, and speaking gibberish.  Aside from Pitt, I particularly enjoyed Vinnie Jones, Dennis Farina, and Rade Serbedzija; all of them played well within their comfort zones (criminals), but they were all darned good at it.  I'm not terribly familiar with Alan Ford, but I've liked him quite a bit in both of his Guy Ritchie movies, even if a large part of that like comes solely from his vulgar dialogue.  Oh, and Benicio del Toro was good is his bit role, but I was disappointed by just how small his part ended up being.  I was surprised to see Jason Statham play such an inconsequential part of the story; despite narrating the film, his character doesn't really do much to propel the plot.  In retrospect, it is also shocking that he doesn't fight a single person in this, his big American film debut, and he even manages to keep his shirt on for the whole movie.

So far, I think I can justly sum up Snatch as being a fast-paced crime caper with a focus on humor and eccentric characters.  It's not a deep film, but it's fun, even when it sabotages its momentum with repeater jokes.  On its own merits, this is kind of like the movie equivalent of junk food; it is enjoyable, but ultimately full of empty calories.  When you take a broader look at this film, though, you will see striking similarities to Ritchie's first film, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.  I'm not talking about having Vinnie Jones, Jason Statham, Jason Flemyng, and Alan Ford in both movies, Matthew Vaughn as a producer, or even the fact that John Murphy did the score for both films.  The look and feel of both movies is nearly identical.  The way things end in both films is pretty similar, too.  Even the basic premise of a slightly crooked, but good, guy getting in over his head with a violent gangster is repeated.  Heck, Vinnie Jones' first scenes in both movies are barely distinguishable.  Snatch feels like an attempt to recreate Ritchie's breakthrough picture, but with Hollywood actors.  As such, most people like whichever movie they saw first, which is a shame; Snatch is funnier, but less consistent and less focused.

Having gotten that off my chest, I must admit that I still enjoy Snatch.  Yes, it's basically a repeat of a movie I really like.  Yes, it is all over the place, in terms of plot and characters.  No, I don't really care about any of the characters as anything other than props for action and foul-mouthed jokes.  But it is a damned good time, and it makes me laugh every time.

 This review was done by request.  So, there...service with a smile!