Tag: Pierce Brosnan

The Long Good Friday (1982) – Review

One of the best scenes in The Godfather is when Don Corleone (Marlon Brando) goes to a meeting with the heads of the other Five Families (as well as mobsters from other parts of the country), and they, led by Don Barzini (Richard Conte), try to convince him to take the deal he had rejected earlier; that is, go into the drug trade, which they would control, and Don Corleone would allow the others access to the politicians he’s been paying off. At the end of his pitch, Barzini acknowledges Don Corleone could, by rights, bill the other families for his services here; “After all, we are not Communists.” This line is meant to get a laugh, but it’s also a way of illustrating one of the themes of the film, on how gangsters had become like businessmen (what few could see, of course, is how many businessmen, inspired by the film, would go on to act like gangsters) and embraced the virtues of a capitalist system they nevertheless operated entirely outside of. John Mackenzie’s The Long Good Friday, therefore, wasn’t breaking new ground in depicting the gangster as businessman (for that matter, neither was The Godfather), but it pushed the parallel even further by linking its gangster character to the pro-business philosophy of Margaret Thatcher (who had recently been elected Prime Minister of Britain), and contemplating what happened when it went up against a fanatical group, in this case the IRA.

Harold with Charlie (Eddie Constantine) and Victoria (Helen Mirren).

Ironically, when writer Barrie Keeffe and producer Barry Hanson got together one night in late 1977, they were merely looking to make a good gangster story (originally for TV), as Keefe had been fascinated by gangsters since encountering Ronnie Kray in a bathroom when Keefe was a teenager. But when Keeffe became disgusted with how his old neighborhood had been gentrified, and some time later, had found himself inside a pro-IRA bar in North London, he decided to combine those two strands into the gangster script he would write. Called “The Paddy Factor” (after the term Scotland Yard used for unsolved crimes that assumed the IRA were the culprit), the script eventually made its way to John Mackenzie, then known mostly for his work on television (though, ironically enough, he had just made his own gangster film, A Sense of Freedom, a biopic of Scottish gangster Jimmy Boyle). Mackenzie loved the main character of Harold Shand (played in the movie by Bob Hoskins, then best known as the sheet-music salesman in the BBC version of Dennis Potter’s “Pennies from Heaven”), but felt the script was florid in many places and needed work. Out of that work came The Long Good Friday (a temporary title – used by Mackenzie because he felt the original title gave the movie’s plot twists away – that became the real title).

Pierce Brosnan in his film debut.

As the movie opens, Harold is sitting on top of the world; there’s been peace in the gangster world for the past 10 years, he’s made an awful lot of money, and he and his associates are about to make more, thanks to an upcoming deal he has with Charlie (Eddie Constantine), an American gangster who’s in town. Soon, however, Harold’s world starts to fall apart; Colin (Paul Freeman, soon to be best known as Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark), one of his best friends and closest associates, is knifed in a bathhouse (in his first film role, Pierce Brosnan plays the killer), a bomb goes off in the car taking Harold’s mother to church, killing the driver, and a bomb is found in a pub Harold owns. Not only that, but when Harold and Victoria (Helen Mirren), his mistress, take Charlie and his lawyer to another restaurant Harold owns for dinner, a bomb explodes inside right as they’re pulling up, injuring all of the staff and customers. While Victoria tries to placate Charlie and his lawyer Tony (Stephen Davies), Harold tries to get to the bottom of what’s going on, even pulling in some of the other gang bosses to interrogate them (in one of the film’s most memorable scenes, Harold has them hung by hooks in a meatpacking plant). Eventually, Harold discovers it’s the IRA who’s involved – Jeff (Derek Thompson), another one of his closest associates, was paying the IRA to avoid troubles with them, but Colin robbed them, and when the IRA learned Colin was associated with Harold, they targeted Harold. Everyone tries to warn Harold not to mess with the IRA, including Jeff, Charlie, and Parky (Dave King), the police detective on Harold’s payroll, but Harold thinks they’re no more dangerous than the usual thugs he’s dealt with. Of course, Harold is proven wrong.

In a famous scene, Harold confronts his associates in a butcher shop.

While Mackenzie insisted on beefing up the IRA angle, as he wanted not only to contrast the fanaticism of the IRA with the “it’s just business” attitude of Harold and the other gangsters, but also to contrast it with the Thatcher-like values Harold was espousing, it did prove for some rocky times when it came to getting the film released. The original company that was set to release it wanted to cut the film because of the IRA theme, and also dub over Hoskins’ voice. Hoskins eventually took them to court to get that stopped, and the producer bought the film back from the distributor, but it wasn’t until Eric Idle saw the film at a screening (at the behest of Hoskins or Mirren) and recommended it to Handmade Films (who had distributed Monty Python’s Life of Brian) that they picked up the film. And the IRA does add all of those elements to the film, making it more than just a gangster film. Of course, it’s also a character study, and Mackenzie and Keeffe bring that out as well. Early on in the film, George takes Charlie and other friends and associates (including Parky) on his boat, and announces the prospective partnership while they go under a bridge. Mackenzie and cinematographer Phil Meheux (who went on to shoot four more films for Mackenzie, including The Fourth Protocol, with Brosnan in a starring role this time) frame Harold in the center, making him a larger-than-life figure, which is of course setting him up for a fall. Harold at first seems to be, despite his working-class upbringing, a charming, if over-enthusiastic (Charlie has to warn Harold not to rush him), boss, and yet at the same time has to show the danger and anger lurking underneath, while also showing some vulnerability as well, and Mackenzie and Keeffe are able to bring all of that out.

Harold accepts his fate.

A lot of that is due to Hoskins, of course, He makes Harold into a dynamo despite his stature (watch the way he walks through the airport in his first scene), yet also someone who’s smart and capable of grief despite his toughness (as when he hears of Colin’s death, and after he kills Jeff in a blind rage after discovering Jeff’s betrayal). The most memorable demonstration of Hoskins’ ability (and the best, in my opinion) comes at the end of the film. After Harold finds out Charlie is pulling out of his deal because of all of the bombings and because of the IRA’s involvement, he chews Charlie out for being scared (“The mafia – I’ve shit ’em!”), and resolves to go into business with the Germans. He leaves the hotel where Charlie is at, and signals for a car, only to find out too late it has Brosnan and another IRA member inside (Victoria is trapped inside another car). Hoskins is able to go from disbelief to anger to acceptance, all without saying a word, and it’s a masterful example of good acting. Mirren is also terrific in making the role of Victoria more than just a gangster’s moll. She brings class to Harold, but she also brings intelligence (she’s able to guess Jeff is more involved with the story than he admits), and yet also toughness (she stands up to Harold when he berates her for spilling the beans to Charlie about the bombs) mixed with vulnerability (in that same scene, she also cries in fear, which was Mirren’s suggestion). Constantine, who replaced Anthony Franciosa as shooting started (Franciosa claimed he didn’t like the fact the script had changed so much before the film started shooting), was best known for playing the detective Lemmy Caution in a series of French films, and he may have been a bit flat in delivering his dialogue, but he has the right face for Charlie, and brings a nice presence as well. While Hoskins, Mirren, and of course Brosnan all went on to bigger things, Mackenzie and Keeffe never topped The Long Good Friday, but it’s a tough act to follow.

The Thomas Crown Affair (1999) – Review

Thomas Crown (Pierce Brosnan) at the museum, pointedly not looking at the painting he’s planning to steal.

In its February 1969 issue, Harper’s (a monthly culture, literature, and politics magazine) published Pauline Kael’s “Trash, Art, and the Movies” essay, where she argued movies dismissed as “trash” because they merely aspired to be “entertainment” were as much art as “art” movies.* Unfortunately, in order to make that valid point, Kael indulged in what rightly gets derided today as “clickbait” journalism by denigrating art films, as well as anyone who dared like them, but that’s another discussion entirely. One movie Kael defended in the essay was the 1968 release The Thomas Crown Affair, directed by Norman Jewison and written by Alan Trustman:

 

“If we don’t deny the pleasures to be had from certain kinds of trash and accept The Thomas Crown Affair as a pretty fair example of entertaining trash, then we may ask if a piece of trash like this has any relationship to art. And I think it does.”

 

Though I of course strenuously disagree with Kael’s attitude towards “’art” films, I do think she’s correct when she writes that “trash” (I prefer “entertainment”) does have a relationship to art. That said, my problem with the original version of The Thomas Crown Affair has nothing to do with whether it’s “art” or not, it’s that I don’t feel it’s entertaining enough. Granted, the heist scenes (shot by Haskell Wexler and edited by Hal Ashby, Byron Brandt, and Ralph E. Winters) are tense and exciting, and I think the use of split screens helps in that regard. I was never a member of the Steve McQueen cult, but I think he does a fine job playing the title role. Finally, while I also was never a fan of Alan and Marilyn Bergman, “The Windmills of Your Mind” is a good song used well in the movie. My problem is with Faye Dunaway, or rather, the conception of her character Vicki Anderson, the insurance investigator out to catch Crown and bed him. Admittedly, part of this may have to do with the fact the MPAA ratings system, replacing the old Hays Code, went into effect after this movie was released, so movies were still somewhat repressed. However, Jewison, Trustman, and costume designer Thea van Runkle basically turn Anderson into a girl, with the way she’s dressed (while she does wear business suits, they’re designed to be as demure and non-threatening as possible) to the way she fixates on Crown as a criminal not because of any evidence but because of “women’s intuition”. The famous scene between Crown and Anderson in the bathtub strikes sparks, but otherwise, the way Jewison shoots the two of them together feels like he slathered on the soft-focus photography. To me, the 1999 remake, directed by John McTiernan and written by Leslie Dixon and Kurt Wimmer (McTiernan did uncredited rewrites) is better because it’s more entertaining, making it more artful.

Catherine Banning (Rene Russo) and Detective Michael McCann (Denis Leary) discuss the theft.

In this version, Thomas Crown (Pierce Brosnan) is still a top-notch business tycoon who turns to robbery because he’s bored, but instead of hiring a crew to rob banks, he instead hires a crew to attempt a heist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (which is never named, though it’s pretty obvious – the interiors of those scenes were actually done at the New York Public Library on 42nd Street), except that crew is merely a distraction (they’re easily caught) so Crown himself can steal a valuable Monet. Detective Michael McCann (Denis Leary), who’s in charge of investigating the robbery (along with his partner, Detective Paretti (Frankie Faison)), finds himself working with Catherine Banning (Rene Russo), an investigator from the company that insured the painting. As with the original, Banning figures out Crown is the one who committed the robbery, and as with the original, she wants both to catch him and bed him. As with the original, things don’t entirely work out as planned.

Crown congratulates himself on stealing the painting.

While the original was set, and shot, in Boston, the remake is set, and shot for the most part, in New York City (though it was also shot on location in Martinique when Crown and Banning take off for an island getaway), which means McTiernan has a wealth of New York City actors to use in small roles. Admittedly, some of them don’t have much to do – I’m not sure what led Ben Gazzara or Fritz Weaver (as, respectively, Crown’s lawyer and Crown’s business associate) to appear in this movie unless they originally had bigger parts or they received a good paycheck for their efforts – but people like Michael Lombard (as Bobby, head of security on the floor of the museum), Mark Margolis (as Knutzhorn, an imprisoned forger who has a connection with Crown), and Daniel Oreskes (as the leader of the robbers Crown hires), whom TV viewers would know from their appearances on the original Law & Order, add zip to their roles. Although I don’t normally notice geography when I’m watching a movie, even in movies set in NYC (I can tell if a movie set in NYC was shot elsewhere because it’ll have a certain feel to it, but unless it’s egregious, I don’t mind too much if I’m caught up in the story), I did recognize a couple of locations here, such as the outside of the museum, as well as a scene where Crown and Banning are in Greenwich Village, and McTiernan and cinematographer Tom Priestly Jr. shoot those scenes well. The music score by Bill Conti is another reason why the movie works, as it strikes the perfect light tone, though the best part of the music is the use of two songs. “Windmills of Your Mind”, which was performed by Noel Harrison in the original, gets played as an instrumental during the Greenwich Village scene, and is well covered by Sting over the closing credits. Also, during the final museum scene, Nina Simone’s live version of “Sinnerman” plays, and in addition to being arguably her best song, it also works very well within the scene.

Banning and Crown on the dance floor.

Still, as dazzling as the movie is to listen to and look at (the latter is also helped by the crisp pace McTiernan, Priestly, and editor John Wright give the movie, especially in the heist scenes at the beginning and end of the movie), it wouldn’t work nearly as well without the characters and performances being compelling. McCann is sort of the standard character of the third wheel outside the two romantic leads, as well as being the standard character of the by-the-book detective in a crime movie. Yet that proves to be a good fit for Leary, as well as restraining him to the parameters of the role. Admittedly, I’m someone who thinks a little of Leary can go a long way, and who likes him more when he is working within the context of a role, as in The Ref, his other best performance, where he did riffs on his stand-up persona but also had to do so alongside squabbling couple Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey (Wag the Dog is also a very good movie, and he’s fine in it, but a lot of actors could have played the role, whereas no one could have played Gus in The Ref like Leary did). Leary is more restrained here, basically projecting a sarcastic persona – when he asks Banning if he can drop her off someplace, only to find out she keeps an apartment in New York City (not to mention she’s coming to his office), he responds, “She keeps an apartment. I keep goldfish.” Leary also suggests his usual anger (when McCann sees Banning is upset with the idea Crown is lying to her at one point, but she insists she’s okay, he recalls how when his girlfriend married someone else out of the blue, he had sex with five women in three days, wrecked his car, and got suspended for beating up a suspect, “but I was okay”) rather than going into full-rant mode. Yet at the same time, Leary is also able to suggest how McCann also has feelings for Banning while recognizing he won’t get anywhere with her, and that he knows there’s real police work he does (busting someone who ripped off poor people, putting away an abusive husband and father), so when Banning, in saying goodbye to him near the end, tells him, “You’re a good man,” you believe it. Leary and Faison also provide good comic relief in their reactions to what Banning does, or even the disgusting-looking drink she brings into work one day (“You don’t want to know” is her response).  Dunaway appears in this version as Crown’s psychiatrist, and I know some critics grumbled about the idea someone like Crown would want, much less need, a shrink, but I have a theory her character is all in his head (McTiernan and Priestly shoot her in a black background to contrast with her blond hair), and she’s undercutting Crown’s thoughts at every turn, so I think she works in the context of the role.

Crown at the start of the second heist scene.

Of course, the main reason the movie works so well is the chemistry between Brosnan and Russo. At the time, Brosnan was still in the middle of his run with James Bond, which I think was his weakest period, as well as some of the weaker Bond movies (with the exception of Goldeneye – the parts of Tomorrow Never Dies I like have less to do with Brosnan and more to do with Michelle Yeoh, Jonathan Pryce, and in a smaller role, Vincent Schiavelli), where the charm he showed so effortlessly on Remington Steele seemed forced. When I first saw this movie in theaters, I thought Brosnan was honestly charming as Crown but not necessarily deep. After this movie came out, Brosnan started moving towards more character roles (he had shown he could do comedy in Mrs. Doubtfire, which I didn’t like otherwise, and Mars Attacks, which I did), as when he completely subverted his Bond persona as an amoral spy in The Tailor of Panama and a down-on-his-luck assassin in The Matador, so coming back to this movie shows Brosnan does get the chance to do more than play a persona. McTiernan and Wimmer, who wrote the male parts (Dixon wrote the female parts), have Crown replicate some of the things he did in the original (playing golf, hang gliding), but also give him some bits of business, such as when he challenges Banning by saying, “Do you want to dance, or do you want to dance?”, or when McTiernan and Priestly use a 360 degree pan of Crown right before the second heist scene starts and he says, “Play ball!” (according to McTiernan, that’s what Babe Ruth said right before his last game). Brosnan of course can put on the surface charm Crown has, but he also suggests how he’s intrigued by Banning because she’s someone who can spar with him on an equal level, which Russo brings to the role.

Banning when she thinks she’s lost Crown.

Russo made her mark earlier that decade (after making her film debut in the 1989 baseball comedy Major League) in mainstream movies such as In the Line of Fire, Outbreak, Get Shorty, Tin Cup, and Lethal Weapon 3 and 4, where she was paired with leading men like Clint Eastwood, Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Costner, and Mel Gibson (she also worked with the latter on Ransom). Except for In the Line of Fire, these weren’t the type of movies that got remembered at Oscar time, but Russo held her own with all of them, and convinced you she was capable whether playing a Secret Service agent, a CDC doctor, a B-movie actress, or a psychologist, and playing both comedy (as in Tin Cup when she’s totally flummoxed when Costner confesses he’s in love with her) or drama (as with In the Line of Fire, when Eastwood finally talks about guarding the car when JFK was shot, and she impulsively takes his hand to comfort him). McTiernan and Priestly first shoot Banning as she’s walking behind McCann while Paretti and a museum official explain what happened (in a nice joke, the would-be robbers used an actual Trojan Horse to get inside the museum), just blending in, until she walks up to McCann (whom she insists on calling “lieutenant” at first) as he’s kneeling down, and she blows holes in his theory of the crime. She’s able to figure out what happen (that the robbers were a smokescreen for Crown robbing the Monet), and while she does develop a hunch about Crown when she first sees him, Banning also doesn’t pursue him until she finds out Crown had unsuccessfully tried to bid on the same painting at an auction. Unlike Dunaway in the original, Russo also dresses like an adult here (Kate Harrington and Mark Zunino are the costume designers here), while not being afraid to show her sex appeal in order to try and manipulate Crown, even as she finds herself becoming attracted to him. Banning doesn’t bend the ethics of her profession as much as Anderson did in the original (where she kidnapped a child), though she does break and enter into Crown’s apartment to get the painting (naturally, Crown had prepared for that, which is another nice touch), and she gets furious when she thinks Crown has gotten the better of her, in both personal and professional terms. Russo had shown herself capable of playing roles with more dramatic heft in Ransom (though she’s playing the stereotypical wife role, she gets to show real grief, as when she finds out her son’s been kidnapped, or anger when she thinks Gibson has gotten her son killed), but she ups her game here.

 

McTiernan is probably best remembered today for being the director of the original Die Hard, which was a game-changer as far as action movies go, and for hiring a private investigator to illegally wiretap one of the producers of the Rollerball remake he directed (as well as being imprisoned for perjury when questioned about that), so this movie might get lost in the shuffle when compared to those events. Similarly, the movie came out in 1999, which many (myself included) call one of the best years for movies ever, and saw the release of many boundary-breaking movies. But I would argue another reason why 1999 was such a good year for movies is because there were a lot of mainstream movies that didn’t necessarily break boundaries but were good examples of entertainments. In that context, the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair stands out, much more, in my opinion, than the original did.

 

*-In an interview she gave in the 1980’s, Kael admitted if she had known Hollywood would almost exclusively turn to make “trash”, she would have had second thoughts about writing the essay.