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| rdfs:comment | - British gangster film starring Bob Hoskins as Harold Shand, an old-school London Gangster planning to make the leap from organised crime to legitimate business with the financial aid of some American Legitimate Businessmen and some potentially lucrative property details. Success is within his grasp when a mysterious group of hitmen start targeting Harold and his organisation, executing two of Harold's closest accomplices and bombing several of his businesses.
- The film's protagonist is Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins), an old-fashioned 1960s-style London gangster who in the late 1970s is aspiring to become a legitimate businessman, albeit with the financial support of the American Mafia, with a plan to redevelop the then-disused London Docklands as a venue for a future Olympic Games. The storyline weaves together events and concerns of the late 1970s, including low-level political and police corruption, Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) gun-running, displacement of traditional British industry by property development, Britain's membership of the EEC (later the European Union) and the free market economy (the latter was strongly in the ascendant at the time the film was made, in the first year of the Thatcher government).
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| abstract | - British gangster film starring Bob Hoskins as Harold Shand, an old-school London Gangster planning to make the leap from organised crime to legitimate business with the financial aid of some American Legitimate Businessmen and some potentially lucrative property details. Success is within his grasp when a mysterious group of hitmen start targeting Harold and his organisation, executing two of Harold's closest accomplices and bombing several of his businesses. His deal threatened, Harold starts to use all his muscle and contacts to try and find out who's attacking him -- but when it starts to look as if betrayal could be coming from close to home and prior dodgy dealings might be coming back to bite him, it becomes clear that it's going to be a very long Easter weekend for Harold Shand.
- The film's protagonist is Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins), an old-fashioned 1960s-style London gangster who in the late 1970s is aspiring to become a legitimate businessman, albeit with the financial support of the American Mafia, with a plan to redevelop the then-disused London Docklands as a venue for a future Olympic Games. The storyline weaves together events and concerns of the late 1970s, including low-level political and police corruption, Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) gun-running, displacement of traditional British industry by property development, Britain's membership of the EEC (later the European Union) and the free market economy (the latter was strongly in the ascendant at the time the film was made, in the first year of the Thatcher government). Harold is the undisputed ruling kingpin of the London underworld, when his world is suddenly torn apart by a series of murders and exploding bombs from an unseen foe. Trying to uncover his attackers' identity forms much of the film's subsequent plotline. His ruthless and violent pursuit of leads only points out the small-time tawdriness of the organisation he hopes to legitimise. Harold discovers that his closest aid accidentally became involved with the IRA in a side-job gone wrong in which several IRA men were killed, and that the IRA holds Harold responsible for those deaths. He acts on the information with the same brutality that first took him to the pinnacle of the London underworld. Thinking he's taken care of the problem now, he meets up with the American Mafia representatives, led by actor Eddie Constantine. However, they decide to leave England because of all the recent chaos. When Harold leaves their hotel, he gets into his car, which he thinks is being driven by his chauffeur but in fact has been taken over by two IRA men. As the car speeds away Harold is silent, but gives away a range of emotions: at first astonishment, then anger and finally an acceptance of his coming death. He realizes his enemies this time follow motivations and tactics different from those of his past.
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