MovieChat Forums > The Long Good Friday (1982) Discussion > My problem with this film

My problem with this film

posted 9 years ago by chet19
2 replies | jump to latest

I'm interested in other people's opinion's and I have an open mind if I am missing something.

But the film is about 2 hours long. There's a lot of mystery concerning who is bombing Harold's buildings and killing his friends. So far so good.

But Harold's investigating goes nowhere. He keeps asking people and threatening people, but no one knows anything. We keep getting deeper and deeper into the movie, and after about an hour and 40 minutes, one of his associates says that his friend Colin was involved with the IRA.

The Harold gets his revenge in the next ten minutes, and then the IRA gets their revenge at the end.

I just kept waiting for Harold to slowly uncover the mystery. But no. Someone just came right out and told him.

[–] blufftoni 8 years ago

Why should that make the film disappointing. One of the themes of the film is about how Harold is out of his depth.

[–] garp-26 8 years ago

It is sort of the point of the film that Harold is assailed by forces he can't quite understand so remains arrogant and deluded enough to assume that all it takes is his tried and trusted gangland methods to defeat the enemy. And besides I think Harold had almost put the pieces together for himself by the time he got the complete answer out of Geoff. It seems important that Harold is just as confused as the audience because it provides the necessary surrealism of his situation which for once in his dubious career he can't buy, bribe or murder his way to a solution.