The Long Good Friday is not only a jewel in the crown of British cinema, it's one of the best crime movies ever made. That's just true, you can ask anybody. So when it was announced it was being remade, many film fans were taken aback. When it was announced that directing duties would be taken by Paul WS Anderson (Alien Vs Predator, Resident Evil), many film fans turned purple and, in some cases, fell over. So, when we caught up with Mr Anderson recently, we had to give him the right to defend his remake. So, why do it at all?
"To win Oscars!" he laughed. "Actually, it’s one of my favourite films and I've been pursuing the rights to it for years and years, as have a lot of people, and Hand Made (who own the rights) turned them all down, including Martin Scorsese". Why, you may wonder, would anyone choose Anderson over Scorsese, for anything other than a 5-a-side football match? "I had a take on it that they really liked and I think they knew that I would respect the original movie enough to keep the essence of the original film".
Where the Bob Hoskins-starring 1980s original was set in the grubby world of London gangsters getting entangled with the IRA, Anderson's take is, predictably, relocating to somewhere altogether more glossy.
"It's not the IRA in ours, but it is another terrorist organisation, and we're doing it in Miami, so we're re-imagining it for America Otherwise the story beats and characters will pretty much play out. It will have the same human cortège scene at the start; the spitting in the face; he's been away somewhere, but it won’t have been to New York...I think the script [of the original film], Barrie Keeffe’s original screenplay, is so good. And the story is a great story with a great twist in it. And it's pretty remarkable that your lead character is a gangster and you really root for him. I think it's a great movie for a remake, because outside of the UK it's virtually unknown and it was very much a movie of its time. It really captured that London of that time in the same way we're hopefully going to capture Miami of right now".
Anderson is currently writing the script himself (!) and says he's not too far from finishing. "it's not going to be that hard. It’s like, what did Barrie Keeffe do?...It's not quite [a cut and paste job]. The dialogue will have to change... it's so East-End London. But the structure will be exactly the same, but instead of the grimy east end bathhouse it’ll be the super sleek pool at the Delano hotel".
We have to say, we're still hugely suspicious and don't see why the movie needs to be remade, since it being "of its time" is part of the attraction. The era it chronicled doesn't really exist anymore, what with 'the troubles' (Irish, not women's) having become less prominent in Britain. But could the fact that Anderson won the rights over anyone else mean he actually has something interesting to bring to it? We'll feel more reassured if he finds another role for Charlie from Casualty.