Gangsta Life

The Long Good Friday by J. Mackenzie (1980)

☻

Quotes [first lines] :

Colin: Two large Bushmills, please, darlin'.

TLGF is a gangster flick; and we all know what gangsters do, don't we?

they drink

and they smoke cigarettes, too: 

and sometimes they drink and smoke at the same time:

(here's old Eddie Constantine, as the paradoxical American mafioso)

and they eat loads of crap too:

of course, they also do gangster-only things like shooting each others, or blowing up places:

but to Yours Truly this movie's been mostly useful to look at the whole scene, what is supposed to be "good" and what "evil"; that we've adopted gangster movie habits from our very parents; nonsensical, extremely common, highly self-destructive habits like the consumption of (or addiction to) alcohol and cigarettes. It might actually take decades to notice that those are the worst, the sickest, the cheapest, and yet the most effective drugs available in the vast, mysterious universe of drugs. 

Above all, the worst ones. And yet above all, the licit ones.

I must write something about it, in a more direct way as the Italian way still seems to be.

About the movie, I'd like to hang up someone like this:

in front of someone else with a huge shiny sharp knife in his hand, and a weary, idle, and yet somehow insane look in his eyes. For such must be the look in the eye of the ordinary butcher.

I mean I'd like to hang you up there, meat consumer. Just for a while. For a change.

This movie is somehow solid so as its director is (described here); somehow elegant, and yet very 70s-like (in fact, it was supposed to be released in '79). Not a hell of a movie but, hey, it's a gangster movie.

You can only rely on a good story, on the smoothness of telling it, and possibly the good acting of the cast.   

And about these issues, we're more or less pretty satisfied.

With a young and gay Pierce Brosnan as the first talking silent killer in the history of cinema; in the showers at the swimming pool, with Paul

"René Belloq"

 Freeman; he says "Hi", almost blushing

it was his first time (there)

and -in spite of the extremely Londoner speaking- one verb comes out for free (and no subtitles!=):

to flabbergast: to overwhelm with shock, surprise, or wonder.

In my judgement: '70s. (And extemely Londoner).  Mostly mild, except for Hoskins.

Suggestion: special Academy Award to director John Mackenzie for the most discreet cameo