The Long Good Friday (1980)

Colin (Paul Freeman) delivered a suitcase of money, but not before pocketing some of it.  Soon after, his driver and date are killed and left on the side of the road.  Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) returned to London from the United States.  Harold is a gangster with a beautiful girlfriend (Helen Mirren), an extensive network of goons & thugs, a police chief on the dole, and even a councilman in his pocket.  His trip to America was to arrange a joint venture with the mafia.  Everything was going his way.  Then his Roll Royce exploded, killing the driver.  Colin turned up stabbed to death at a swimming pool.  Who was making a move against him?  His deal with the mafia was being threatened.  Strong measures were needed.  However, every effort came to naught.  No one knew from where the threat originated.  When the full story is finally revealed, many of the mysterious events become clear.  Even so, Harold thinks he can handle this threat the way he has handled other gangsters.  He cannot.  Of course, virtually everyone in the film is a criminal, a corrupt official, or a hapless victim.  Many of them get their just deserts.

Bob Hoskins is terrific as the gangster, a great performance.  Sure, he's clearly a bad guy but you can't help but root for him to come through this trial.  The rest of the cast is quite good, but this is Hoskin's movie and he carries it perfectly.  Paul Freeman had surprisingly high billing for someone with almost no lines who dies early in the film.  He followed this movie by playing the chief villain, Belloq, in Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Pierce Brosnan makes his movie debut as an IRA assassin, his only line being 'Hi' before stabbing Colin to death.  His IRA partner, Daragh O'Malley, would go on to play Sgt. Harper in the Sharpe series.

Terrific film that grows to a crescendo of an ending.  Highly recommended.

2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)

Dr. Heywood Floyd authored a report on the Discovery mission to Jupiter in the wake of its failure.  Years later, the US is preparing a new ship to find out what happened.  However, the Russians also have a ship that will go to Jupiter; they will arrive a year earlier.  Despite rising tensions between the US and the USSR in Central America, Dimitri Moisevitch (Dana Elcar) suggests a joint operation.  Three Americans - Floyd, Curnow (John Lithgow), and Chandra (Bob Balaban) - travel to Jupiter with the Russian crew.  By the time they arrive, tensions between the US and the USSR are on the brink of war.  This makes cooperation between the Americans and the Russians difficult.  While flying near Europa, they send a probe and are on the brink of seeing something when the probe is destroyed.  Hmm.  Later, they airbrake in the Jovian atmosphere before rendevousing in orbit around Io with the Discovery.  Doctor Chandra reactivates HAL and investigates what went wrong.  Meanwhile, strange events are happening.  Visions of Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) abound and the massive monolith destroys another Russian probe.

The movie's big failure is that it takes place in a future that never came.  The USSR was gone less than 10 years after the film was made.  The inclusion of Cold War politics was a mistake and adds very little.  Also, despite being made 15 years after the original, the special effects are less impressive.  Though there are lots of Russian cosmonauts on the Leonov, only two get much development.  There is Tanya Kirbuk (Helen Mirren) as the commander and Max (Elya Baskin).  Baskin and Lithgow have good chemistry during the spacewalk transit between the Leonov and the Discovery.  Baskin proves to be a very likable character, which was doubtless intentional considering his fate.

A sequel that is very different from the original.  Just okay.

The Madness of King George (1994)

In 1788, King George III (Nigel Hawthorne) is going about his kingly duties and bemoaning the loss of the colonies.  Prime Minister Pitt (Julian Wadham) reminds him that they are independent now.  Other than his dismay at the loss of America, the king seems fine.  Then he wakes up at 4 AM and commences to rant and rave, dash about in his bed clothes with various servants chasing, and even attempts to ravish the beautiful Lady Pembroke (Amanda Donahoe) despite the presence of his wife, Queen Charlotte (Helen Mirren).  Efforts are made to hide the odd behavior of the king, but the Prince of Wales (Rupert Everett) engineers a public appearance where the king's madness is exposed.  While doctors - mostly in the pocket of the prince - endeavor to restore the king's sanity, Mr. Fox (Jim Carter) proposes a bill of regency that will grant all the powers of the monarchy to the prince.  As the days drag into weeks, the votes accumulate to pass the proposed regency bill.  Requiring a specialist, Francis Willis (Ian Holm) was summoned from Lincolnshire to treat the king.  Can Willis restore the king before he is usurped by his power-hungry son?

I had originally seen this while I was taking English History at the University of Iowa.  Though we were covering the Restoration (1660) at the time, the professor could not help but comment on the film.  He thought it was mostly good though he questioned the emphasis on George III's obsession about the loss of America shown in the film.  He particularly liked the joke about Piss the Younger and Piss the Elder, which didn't click with me at the time.  Pitt the Elder was prime minister from 1766 to 1768, while his son, Pitt the Younger, was PM from 1783-1801 and again from 1804-1806.

The most glaring error that I saw was the representation of the United States on the globe in the King's office.  It showed the US in possession of the Louisiana Purchase (1804) and with the Oregon Treaty boundary settled on the 49th parallel (1846).  This is a very specific window, as the US would acquire the southwest from Mexico two years later.

Though usually cast as a villain on this side of the Atlantic, George is quite likable here.  I wonder how accurate Hawthorne's portrayal is.  Did the king really say, "what what" as a tick?  Though he recovered from this bout of madness, he had a recurrence in 1810 that resulted in The Regency Act of 1811.  George III died in 1820.

Outstanding film that has both drama and comedy.  Better still, it provides fairly accurate history of the period though it does compress a few things for the sake of the narrative.  Highly recommended.