Who said genre films had to be narrow? THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY is a gangster film, and an excellent one at that, exploring old themes of loyalty, betrayal, expansion etc. with verve and excellently choreographed, imaginatively novel violence (and no law in sight). <br /><br />But it also reveals how versatile genre is, and so we have the best ever critique of Thatcherism (with Harold Shand an embodiment of entrepeneurial culture, beset by the same problems that would dog the Tories (IRA, Americans, drugs etc), but also a hangover from the Welfare State in his misplaced loyalties - this schizophrenia tears him apart); a great London film, with an insightful sense of change and place, and meanings bound up in different spaces; and an extraordinary character study cum love story, which becomes an existential journey in the Bressonian mould. <br /><br />Final third flags after so much Cagneyesque energy, and older national vices, such as theatricality and stiff upper lip, do briefly intrude, but on the whole, this is a British film of rare ambition.