THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY (1980)

After having the fuck disappointed out of me recently by THE UNTOUCHABLES, I did some reading about it and found out that Bob Hoskins was originally slated to play Al Capone.  He was later replaced by Robert De Niro...not that it really matter since Capone only had a few minutes of screentime.  Anyway, Hoskins does play a mob boss in this film and he's pretty damn good.

Outwardly, Hoskins character looks like a businessman, but in reality he's the head of the biggest syndicate in London.  At the moment he's working on a huge real estate co-deal with the American mob that's gonna make him richer than god.  So it'd be a bad time for something negative to happen.  Something like...ohh, your right hand man getting stabbed to death, a bomb going off in your restaurant, your underlings stealing money from the IRA, a guy getting nailed to the floor.  Stuff like that could ruin your day.

THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY is a good film.  Interesting camerawork, strong direction, Bob Hoskins snarling, forward moving story, great looking vintage cars, Helen Mirren lookin' good, young Remington Steele, solid acting all around.  The only trouble I had is that main theme song ("Taken") was so goddamn awesome that the movie just couldn't live up to it.  When that song started at the beginning of the film I was totally taken back cause that's like a werewolf-knight-going-out-and-killing-three-hundred-zombies-with-a-long-sword-montage music!  Yeah, there was a good amount of violence, but there wasn't anything that could rival that song.

Worth a watch.