Martin Scorsese Wants You to Watch These Two British Gangster Classics

Martin Scorsese has made some of the most famous gangster movies ever, but he doesn’t just watch American crime films. He also has a real love for British gangster stories.

During a talk with director Edgar Wright for the British Film Institute, Scorsese brought up two British films he thinks everyone should see.

He said “There’s a toughness in the British style that doesn’t have any room for compromise.” The movies he mentioned were The Long Good Friday and Down Terrace.

The Long Good Friday came out in 1980 and stars Bob Hoskins as a London crime boss whose criminal world starts falling apart. He plays a character named Harold Shand, who’s trying to figure out who’s targeting him. The movie is full of tension, violence, and betrayal. Helen Mirren plays his girlfriend, and both actors were praised for their performances. This film had a big influence on other British crime films that followed, including the work of Guy Ritchie.

Down Terrace, released in 2009, is a much smaller and stranger film. It was directed by Ben Wheatley and tells the story of a father and son just out of prison, trying to track down whoever betrayed them. The film is dark, funny, and very British. It didn’t get a huge release, but Scorsese sees it as something special. It also won some awards at the British Independent Film Awards.

When talking about what makes British crime movies different, Scorsese said it has a lot to do with the people and the history behind them. “It seems to me it’s in the behaviour of the characters,” he said. “I think a lot of it has to do with the roots of the underworld in England, going back to Cornwall, wrecking ships, the whole village being in on the destruction in order to take the cargo – Jamaica Inn, basically.”

He also said, “There’s a strong, mean edge to it, and the characters are hardened. It comes from hundreds of years of being hardened. You go back to the highwaymen, you go back to Dick Turpin, you go back to all of that.”

Scorsese might be the king of American gangster films, but his love for these British movies shows how much he pays attention to cinema from all over. If he says something’s worth watching, it probably is.

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