The Long Good Friday

The Long Good Friday (1980) is a British crime thriller directed by John Mackenzie — watch it online on iFILM. Bob Hoskins plays Harold Shand, a Cockney gangster who has spent years turning the London docks into a criminal business empire and is now trying to pull in American Mafia money to redevelop a derelict stretch of the city. Helen Mirren plays Victoria, his composed and sharp-minded partner. A young Pierce Brosnan appears in one of his earliest screen roles.

Everything goes wrong over a single Easter weekend. While the Americans are in town to discuss the deal, Harold's cars start blowing up, his men turn up dead, and his pub burns down. He is convinced there is a traitor somewhere close. What follows is a systematic and brutal hunt for the source — with the Americans watching, and the clock running on the biggest deal of his life.

Hoskins gives one of the great performances in British cinema: a man who built everything on controlled violence, now facing something he cannot intimidate into submission. Stream The Long Good Friday (1980) online on iFILM.