“This country’s a worse risk than Cuba! It’s a banana republic!” That is how Britain is brusquely described in the classic Brit gangster melodrama from 1980, now on rerelease, written by Barrie Keeffe and directed by John Mackenzie. It features a criminal property developer in trouble with rich Americans and the IRA. (A modern-day remake would turn them into Russians and Islamic State.) The film has dated a bit, but it’s surprising how very cleverly it intuits the property boom of London in 2015, and its yearning to be at the centre of a globalised economy, while at the same time absorbing both 70s drear and 80s aspiration. Bob Hoskins (below) is East End geezer Harold Shand – pop-eyed, nervy and insecure about his imminent big break – with plans for a legitimate real estate empire in the London docklands, inspired by reports that the 1988 Olympics will be sited there. First he has to impress a possible American investor, who arrives at the very moment a gang war erupts. Helen Mirren is Harold’s testy, tasty posh girlfriend. The film is notably worldly and tolerant on the subject of gay sex. On the issue of race it’s dodgier, though Shand is supposed to be racist. Hoskins’ bullish, black-comic Napoleonism makes this movie: pugnacious, sentimental, a cockney Cagney.
