who say genre film have to be narrow . the long good friday be a gangster film and and an excellent one at that and explore old theme of loyalty and betrayal and expansion etc . with verve and excellently choreograph and imaginatively novel violence ( and no law in sight ) . but it also reveal how versatile genre be and and so we have the best ever critique of thatcherism ( with harold shand an embodiment of entrepeneurial culture and beset by the same problem that would dog the tory ( ira and american and drug etc ) and but also a hangover from the welfare state in his misplaced loyalty this schizophrenia tear him apart ) while a great london film and with an insightful sense of change and place and and meaning bind up in different space while and an extraordinary character study cum love story and which become an existential journey in the bressonian mould . final third flag after so much cagneyesque energy and and old national vice and such a theatricality and stiff upper lip and do briefly intrude and but on the whole and this be a british film of rare ambition .