"The best gangster film to come out of England since Get Carter and before The Krays. Bob Hoskins is a vicious platypus with the ears of a marsupial. Helen Mirren is the new Marie Windsor, with brains. Great for them that prefers it rough. Kind of like if Donovan's Brain were implanted in Andy Capp's head." (Barry Gifford) "(This) comes as close to being a Chekhovian gangster movie as any I have ever seen. Bob Hoskins' Harold Shend is a gangster lord of the old order, seeking nothing so much as to establish peace and quiet in order to develop his real estate empire. Harold and his classy mistress (Mirren) float down the Thames in their yacht, while all about them a crazily fermenting world is spawning a new brand of terrorism that threatens their very existence...(B)rutal violence tears away intermittently at the jagged edges of the scenario..." (Andrew Sarris)