“I run London!” exclaims Bob Hoskins as the city’s ruthless gangster-in-chief Harold Shand, until he realizes (much too late) that he in fact does not. One of British cinema’s zenith achievements, The Long Good Friday slingshotted both Hoskins and Scottish director John Mackenzie to international recognition. Initially written and financed as a low-budget mobsploitation tale for TV—the last in a three-picture deal small-screen mogul Lew Grade struck with producer Barry Hanson—the finished product ultimately contained too many bombs and IRA references for Grade’s liking. After ITV would only air a hastily redacted seventy-five-minute botch job (free of all allusion to Irish terror, and thus also of narrative coherence), The Beatles’ George Harrison stepped in to acquire rights and distribute the unabridged director’s cut theatrically. Helen Mirren and a twenty-five-year-old Pierce Brosnan appear in early performances, yet it is Hoskins who excels as an affable hooligan (or raging chevalier) always on the edge of boiling over, accompanied throughout by Francis Monkman’s sensational electro-orchestral score. Mackenzie and cinematographer Phil Méheux ensure the camera is perpetually on the move, capturing early 80s (which is to say early Thatcher) London from angles both flattering and uncanny: a camera on the move, made for a man on the run in a city undergoing unstoppable transformation.