A ROLE MADE IN HEAVEN

What’s this? Tough-looking Bob Hoskins as a compassionate priest? Urbane and gentle Alan Bates as a killer? Odd casting, surely? “Yes,” said director Mike Hodges. “That’s what makes this picture so interesting.”

Here in London, Hodges is filming a $6-million crime thriller, “A Prayer for the Dying,” based on a Jack Higgins novel and starring Hoskins, Bates and Mickey Rourke. Produced by Peter Snell for the Goldwyn Co. it marks Hoskins’ first movie since his international success in “Mona Lisa.”

Hodges, who made his reputation with the 1970 British gangster movie “Get Carter,” starring Michael Caine, is happy to return to the genre.

“I spent years trying to make another film as good as ‘Get Carter’ that wasn’t a gangster picture,” Hodges said, standing in a Catholic cemetery in suburban London amid winged angels, Virgin Marys and bronzed effigies. “I think I’ve learned a lot since then.”

It was the chance to play a role very different from the ones with which Hoskins made his name--a gangster baron in “The Long Good Friday,” a tough ex-con in “Mona Lisa”--that attracted him to the role.

“When Mike Hodges came round to my house and told me he wanted me to play the priest with Alan as the gangster, I was immediately interested,” Hoskins said, swigging down tea in his trailer. “And I liked the idea of working with Mickey Rourke, who I knew.”

Higgins’ novel “A Prayer for the Dying,” which the New York Times called “tough, bitter and superbly written,” is about an IRA gunman Martin Fallon (Mickey Rourke), a man with a bloody record of violence in Northern Ireland, who flees to England where he is promised a new start--money and a passport--by a London crime czar, Dandy Jack Meehan (Alan Bates).

The price? One more killing. He has to kill one of Meehan’s enemies, a man who is only without bodyguards when he goes to put flowers on his mother’s grave.

It is in the cemetery that Fallon shoots the man dead--but the killing is witnessed by the parish priest, Father da Costa (Hoskins). Before the police can question Da Costa, Fallon goes to confession and admits the murder to him. The priest is thus bound to silence, the secrets of the confessional being inviolate.

“It’s very Graham Greene-ish, this story,” said Hodges. “And the characters are straight out of Dickens. Rat-like crooks, old London warehouses, cemeteries--and a blind girl, Anna (Sophie Ward), who is Da Costa’s niece.

“Bob is quite wonderful as the priest. It could have been a boring part but as played by Bob he’s almost Cagney-ish. Alan, jolly and terrifying at the same time as Meehan, is terrific.”

Meehan’s way of warning people to toe the line is to drive a spike through their hand, pinning them to the floor for an hour or two. And Bates, one of Britain’s most celebrated actors, is relishing the role.

“I rarely get the chance to do this sort of thing,” Bates said. “Most people don’t see me as a gangster. And this one is really bad.”

Meehan, who runs a thriving funeral parlor, likes to do the cosmetic work on the deceased himself. He is into murder and drug-pushing on the side.

“But he gets his comeuppance,” said Bates with a chuckle. “Blown to pieces with one of his own bombs.”

Rourke, 30, the sharp-eyed star of “Rumblefish” and “Year of the Dragon”--who reportedly turned down the “Top Gun” role taken by Tom Cruise--has been involved for more than a year with “A Prayer for the Dying.” The idea of playing a reformed gunman, it seems, appealed to him from the start.

“He’s contributed a lot of good ideas to the script,” said Hodges. “He’s very good in this. But then I’ve always liked his work. He’s spent months perfecting an Irish accent. He really looks the part.”

Hodges, too, worked on the script by Edmund Ward.

“I think my main contribution was to make this killing Fallon’s last,” he said. “In Ireland he killed for political reasons. This last one he does for self-preservation. In the original story he went on killing people, which I thought wouldn’t work for us. It made him just another hoodlum.”

Before starting this movie, Hoskins told Brian De Palma that, should Robert De Niro not be available to play Al Capone in “Untouchables,” he would take on the role.

“He was quite straight with me,” said Hoskins. “I met him in Los Angeles when I was there publicizing ‘Mona Lisa’ and he said: ‘I really want Robert De Niro, but if he doesn’t do it will you?’ It was just a small part, two weeks’ work in Chicago, and the money was good so I said, ‘Yes.’ I had no contract or anything. What really surprised me was that after De Niro decided to do it, De Palma insisted on paying me--even though he didn’t owe me a penny. I couldn’t believe it. It’s the easiest $200,000 I never earned. If all acting was like that I might have started earlier.”

Since the success of “Mona Lisa” some people have suggested that Hoskins should move to Hollywood.

“I couldn’t do that,” he said. “My roots are here. My mum and dad live just round the corner. All my friends are here. Anyway, once you’ve cracked it here, there’s a wide variety of work available for someone like me.”

“A Prayer for the Dying,” he hopes, will prove to be a taut, tough thriller.

“Mike Caine says there’ve been only three good gangster movies to come out of Britain,” he said. “One he did--’Get Carter.’ One I did--’The Long Good Friday.’ And the third we both did--’Mona Lisa.’ Be nice if this was the fourth.”