The Long Good Friday - Plot

Plot

The film's protagonist is Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins), an old-fashioned 1960s-style London gangster who in the late 1970s is aspiring to become a legitimate businessman, albeit with the financial support of the American Mafia, with a plan to redevelop the then-disused London Docklands as a venue for a future Olympic Games. The storyline weaves together events and concerns of the late 1970s, including low-level political and police corruption, Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) gun-running, the displacement of traditional British industry by property development, Britain's membership of the EEC (later the European Union) and the free market economy – the latter was strongly in the ascendant at the time the film was made, in the first year of the Thatcher government.

Harold is the undisputed ruling kingpin of the London underworld, when his world is suddenly torn apart by a series of murders and exploding bombs from an unseen foe. Uncovering his enemy's identity forms much of the film's subsequent plotline. His ruthless and violent pursuit of leads only points out the small-time tawdriness of the organisation he hopes to legitimise.

The story seems to hinge upon an act of betrayal by one of Harold's closest aides, the implications of which only become clear near the film's climax, when the solution to the mystery is suggested though not spelled out. He acts on the information with the same brutality that took him to the pinnacle of the London underworld in the first place, but his enemies this time follow motivations different from those of his local rivals.

The American Mafia representatives, led by actor Eddie Constantine, decide to leave England because of all the killings but Harold is determined to stay and go into business with a German consortium, saying that he will become a legitimate businessman. When he leaves their hotel, he gets into his car, which he thinks is being driven by his chauffeur but in fact has been taken over by two IRA men. The car then sharply pulls out from the hotel zone. Harold realises that his girlfriend, Victoria, is not in the car and sees her in the back of another car being driven away by armed men. Harold finds himself at gunpoint from the front seat passenger (a then-unknown Pierce Brosnan). As the car speeds away Harold is silent, but in his face we see a full range of emotions; at first astonishment which gives way to anger and then a slow realization that he is powerless and finally resignation to the fact that he is moments from death.