Make the Case: 5 Best Bob Hoskins Movies

We’re going to talk about them in greater detail later, but for now, there are a couple of things to mention about two of the best Bob Hoskins movies.

Two movies that dominated my childhood, which featured the late, dearly missed Bob Hoskins: One was obviously Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It won’t surprise anyone who knows even a little about me to know that I grew up loving that movie. In the present, it holds up astonishingly well. Hoskins performance as the gruff, flawed, but ultimately moral PI Eddie Valiant was something I liked even as a four-year-old. Like the movie itself, the performance, the character, and ultimately the man who put those things together hold up very well indeed.

I didn’t even know Bob Hoskins was English until I was a teenager.

The other Bob Hoskins movie that was on TV a lot, and was also something my mom watched as a comfort movie, was Mermaids. That also started and contributed heavily to my ongoing Winona Ryder crush, but that’s a story for another time.

In both of these movies, playing fairly different characters with a distinct on-screen presence, Bob Hoskins became one of my favorite actors growing up. Unfortunately, as the 90s went on, the only place to often catch Hoskins was in movies of varying quality. One of them, Super Mario Bros, is widely considered to be one of the worst movies of the 90s.

I saw it opening day on my birthday. It’s up there, although that has nothing to do with Hoskins performance as the most iconic plumber in video game history. He was actually fine. As I watched him in different movies over the years, eventually going back to his classic roles in stuff like The Long Good Friday, I came to appreciate an actor who could bring his singular qualities and energy to a wide range of characters.

However, the fighters, in one form or another, are the characters Hoskins played best. Those are the performances I continued to appreciate, even as Hoskins screen presence began to diminish in the 2010s. He retired unexpectedly, at least to me, in 2012 due to Parkinson’s. In 2014, he passed away at the relatively young age of 71. An actor of Hoskins durability and stature, you kind of assume will be around forever.

Or close to it. Six years and change from his passing, he remains one of my favorite actors of all time.

To the point where this month, just for fun, I’m bringing back the original format of Make the Case. We’re going to take a chronological look at Bob Hoskins’ 5 best performances.

A couple of those choices have obviously already been mentioned. I’m hoping the other three will be a surprise, or at least something you haven’t seen.

 

5. Felicia’s Journey (1999)

Director: Atom Egoyan

The movies of Atom Egoyan are compelling, richly weird, and generally depressing on a truly impressive scale. Felicia’s Journey is no different, particularly in its performance by Bob Hoskins as a man whose heart is dark, confused, but also overwhelmed with focus.

Elain Cassidy as the Felicia of the title is the other half of this film’s powerful psychological study of two very different people occupying the same place and time with very different things going on upstairs. Hoskins could play irredeemable men. He proves that here, but gives the character of Joe Hilditch an unexpected, and unforgettable, element of sorrow. Felicia’s Journey was not Hoskins last project by a long shot, but it might be his last truly great performance.

 

4. Mermaids (1990)

Director: Richard Benjamin

One of many films directed by the underrated character actor Richard Benjamin, Mermaids is an odd movie. It is essentially a family comedy-drama that focuses on a young(ish) mother (Cher), and her two children (elementary school-age Christina Ricci and high school-age Winona Ryder). It is also a coming-of-age story for Ryder’s character, as well as the story of a single mother who is determined to be herself and the best possible mom at all costs. These goals often run into each other.

Indeed, with quite a bit going on between these characters, it seems surprising that there would be any significant room for Hoskins as a love interest for Cher’s character. Yet Hopkins excels in a role that allows him to simply be a nice, slightly eccentric man, who happens to be absolutely crazy about this woman he’s met. The scenes between Hoskins and Cher are two very good actors at their best in their ability to create a memorable dynamic with the other person in the scene.

 

3. Mona Lisa (1986)

Director: Neil Jordan

Hoskins’ single Oscar nomination (what the hell, guys?) came with 1986’s neo-noir hit from director/co-screenwriter Neil Jordan. Like some of Jordan’s best films, one of the main themes are people from unlikely or darker walks of life being thrust together by fate.

A working-class mob goon who gets a job after his release for keeping his mouth shut, Hoskins plays George as a basically decent human being, who doesn’t really know how to get his life going again. Not even a job as chauffeur and bodyguard to a high-class prostitute named Simone (Cathy Tyson, brilliant in her own right) seems to put him on the firm ground he’s hoping for.

The two don’t get along initially, but their evolving relationship creates a fascinating transformation for George, which is beautifully realized by Hoskins’ affectionate, layered portrayal.

 

2. Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Bob Hoskins’ most famous role could have been a disaster for everyone involved. Zemeckis’ bold, loose adaptation of Gary K. Wolf’s surreal novel called for a world in which famous cartoon characters existed and worked alongside human beings. Relatively easy to achieve, the movie’s success would ultimately be dependent upon a human protagonist who could lend vital believability to this world.

Hoskins did more than successfully create a character who seamlessly exists alongside Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Roger Rabbit, Jessica Rabbit, and the rest. He created a character in Eddie who we like and sympathize with outside of the fact that he has to deal with a relentless train of cartoon wackiness.

Eddie isn’t the deepest character in movie history, but Hoskins comedic talents and sincerity in characterizations still makes him the heart and soul of Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

 

1. The Long Good Friday (1980)

Director: John Mackenzie

There are few movie experiences quite as intense, and intoxicating in that intensity, than watching Bob Hoskins (as well as Helen Mirren) in the British gangster-noir classic The Long Good Friday. While not a sympathetic or even particularly likable character, British gangster Harold Shand is nonetheless a victim of nightmarish circumstance.

Call it a type of bureaucracy. A simple misunderstanding that threatens to completely devour Shand’s empire, dash his dreams of going straight, and probably kill him and everyone around him in the bargain. Shand goes on the warpath, and it is never a boring experience to watch Hoskins transform Harold into exactly the kind of vicious brawler who built his criminal enterprise up in the first place.

Hoskins became a star with The Long Good Friday. It isn’t hard to see why. Hoskins as Shand is chaos of the grimmest kind, combined with a methodology to life and work that allows him to shift and reshape even the direst of situations. It is a staggering tightrope act for the character, and it is still one of the best British lead performances in film history.

No other film better showcases an actor I deeply miss seeing, even six years after his passing.

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