blissblogger
Well-known member
does anyone else like this film?
if someone asked me what my favorite films were, this one would never ever come up, but whenver it's on TV --- which is often for some reason, here in the States -- i always watch it. there's something about it i like, or some things, more precisely:
-- britain circa 1979 captured in very clear, bright, almost Southern California light
-- the snazzy, jazzy, brassy main theme music that plays every so often and particularly at the end when the gangsta gets his comeuppance
-- bob hoskins's Taurus-like nostrils-flared barely-contained rage
-- very brief appearance of future Eastender ooh i've forgotten her name, Ian Beale's mum as young vaguely dutch looking sort-of-hottie
-- trying to work out if it's trying to say something politically and what that might be. obviously we have Hoskins as the almost bestial, upward-thrusting energies of entrepreneurial england as released by Thatcher, and Helen Mirren as his posh lover symbolising what, maybe rapprochment of old Tory blue blood with that nouveau riche on the rise class? We have the corrupt (Labour?) local politican and the American financier-criminals in cahoots with Hoskins in the docklands development scheme (but the Yanks ultimately deciding these LImeys are cockamamie losers). But then confusing things we also have the IRA, who prove to be even more ruthless and efficient gangsters. And they triumph over Hoskins. So the message of the film is .... Irish Republicanism will never be defeated?!
anyway it pisses from large height over Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels if you ask me.
if someone asked me what my favorite films were, this one would never ever come up, but whenver it's on TV --- which is often for some reason, here in the States -- i always watch it. there's something about it i like, or some things, more precisely:
-- britain circa 1979 captured in very clear, bright, almost Southern California light
-- the snazzy, jazzy, brassy main theme music that plays every so often and particularly at the end when the gangsta gets his comeuppance
-- bob hoskins's Taurus-like nostrils-flared barely-contained rage
-- very brief appearance of future Eastender ooh i've forgotten her name, Ian Beale's mum as young vaguely dutch looking sort-of-hottie
-- trying to work out if it's trying to say something politically and what that might be. obviously we have Hoskins as the almost bestial, upward-thrusting energies of entrepreneurial england as released by Thatcher, and Helen Mirren as his posh lover symbolising what, maybe rapprochment of old Tory blue blood with that nouveau riche on the rise class? We have the corrupt (Labour?) local politican and the American financier-criminals in cahoots with Hoskins in the docklands development scheme (but the Yanks ultimately deciding these LImeys are cockamamie losers). But then confusing things we also have the IRA, who prove to be even more ruthless and efficient gangsters. And they triumph over Hoskins. So the message of the film is .... Irish Republicanism will never be defeated?!
anyway it pisses from large height over Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels if you ask me.