Film

The Long Good Friday

Name: The Long Good Friday
Genre: Crime, Thriller, Drama
Released: 1980
Cast: Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren, Dave King, Bryan Marshall, Derek Thompson

The Long Good Friday isn't really about plot, it's about watching a man's certainty curdle into fear over one terrible weekend. Bob Hoskins is magnetic as Harold Shand, a self-made crime boss undone by his own ambition, and the film moves through Thatcher-era London with cold, controlled fury. Tense, funny, unexpectedly political — a genuine landmark of British cinema.

TMDb rating

3.6

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you savour a charismatic, self-deluded anti-hero whose grand ambitions slowly curdle, and sharp London dialogue that rewards close, unhurried listening.

Skip it if you want brisk plotting and constant action, since this moves at a deliberate, talky pace with long stretches of scheming between its rare bursts of violence.

What it asks of you: Just under two hours of patience, a slow build, a grim and grubby mood that never lightens, and close attention to who is saying what to whom.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Get Carter1971

Michael Caine's coldest performance, the blueprint for every English gangster revenge film since, all flat vowels and quiet menace against grim Newcastle backdrops.

But Slower and bleaker than modern crime films, the violence is sparse rather than stylish, and the plot unspools with real patience.

Mona Lisa1986

Hoskins again, but soft and heartbroken this time, as a small-time ex-con chauffeuring a call girl through London's underworld. Tender where Harold Shand is savage.

But It's a slow character study more than a thriller, and the sadness sits heavier than the crime plot around it.

Sexy Beast2001

Ben Kingsley terrifying as a psychopathic enforcer dragging a retired gangster back into one last job. Same sun-scorched menace, same sense violence is always one sentence away.

But Its Spanish villa setting and dreamlike tone are a world away from Shand's grey, rain-soaked London.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Long Good Friday

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Brighton Rock1948

Same lineage — a small-time British criminal watching his own operation come apart around him, decades before Shand, proof this genre's DNA runs right through the century.

Richard Attenborough as a baby-faced razor gang leader in postwar Brighton, the film that first turned British seaside gangland into something genuinely frightening.

But Black-and-white, stagey by modern standards, and its moral framework leans more on Catholic guilt than modern crime drama.

Layer Cake2004

Daniel Craig before Bond, cool and calculating as a drug dealer trying to get out clean. Same labyrinthine plotting, same sense everyone's lying to everyone.

But Glossier and more knowing than the original, with a soundtrack and swagger that can feel more style than substance.

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels1998

Guy Ritchie's breakout, all overlapping schemes and East End patter, indebted directly to the earlier film's London-gangster template but played for laughs.

But The comic tone and rapid-fire editing are a big shift from the earlier film's grim seriousness.

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels poster

Villain1971

Richard Burton as a sadistic London crime boss modelled loosely on the Krays, brutal and unsettling in ways British cinema rarely allowed at the time.

But Dated pacing and a script that occasionally strains for shock value over character.

The Krays1990

Gary and Martin Kemp play the real-life twins who terrorised sixties London, a fascinating companion piece on how organised crime built its own mythology.

But More interested in family psychology than crime mechanics, so anyone wanting a tight thriller may find it meandering.

Gangster No. 12000

A vicious, stylish study of ambition and betrayal inside the London underworld, told across two eras with real bite, and chilling by the end.

But Nonlinear structure and unflinching violence make it a rougher watch than most on this list.

Performance.1970

Mick Jagger and James Fox in a hallucinatory collision of gangster brutality and countercultural dissolution, the strangest film to ever grow out of this genre.

But Deliberately disorienting and fragmented, more art film than thriller, and it may frustrate anyone expecting a straight crime story.

Gangs of London2020

Takes Shand's exact structure — a criminal empire suddenly vulnerable, everyone suspecting everyone — and blows it into a serialised, multi-ethnic modern London underworld.

A sprawling modern London crime saga built on the same premise — an empire thrown into chaos after its boss's death — stretched across ten hours instead of two.

But Far more graphically violent and sprawling than the tightly wound original; some will find its scale exhausting rather than gripping.

Uncut Gems2019

Swap gangster politics for gambling debts and you get the same engine — a man convinced he can talk, bluff, or threaten his way out of a collapse he caused himself.

Adam Sandler as a jeweller whose whole life is a controlled demolition of bad decisions, filmed with the same nerve-shredding, real-time panic as Shand's unravelling weekend.

But American, frenetic, and shot through with a comic edge that's a long way from the original's cold English menace.