Who's saying what
"A long laundry list of bastardry." - that line made me read the rest of the review in the voice of Paul Keating. And it was awesome.
It takes a special kind of film-maker to make a soulless murdering psychopath seem dull. Crazed killers and heartless bastards are after all usually kind of interesting.
And yet in scene after scene in Brighton Rock where Pinky (Sam Reily) ticks off another item on his long laundry list of bastardry it’s hard to do anything more than shrug. In part that’s because rolex gmt ii replica watch
in updating the setting of the classic Graham Greene novel from the 1930s to the 60s it cuts the story adrift from whatever moralising point it originally had turning a semi-scathing indictment of a morals-free thug into just another sub-Scarface time-waster.
At least the basics of the story remain the same: Pinky is an up-and-coming thug in a Brighton gang that’s on the way out. Their boss has just been killed by a rival (and much more powerful) gang and the man stepping into his shoes clearly doesn’t have the guts for it. To make matters worse Pinky had his photo taken with the crim he was about to murder as payback panerai replica watches
so he has to grudgingly seduce tearoom waitress Rose (Andrea Riseborough) to keep the photo out of the law’s hands. Rose falls for him hard to the dismay of her boss (Helen Mirren) but Pinky’s too busy betraying everyone he can’t murder to really care barely tolerating her yet unable to ditch her as she’s the only one who can place him at the murder.
It’s all basic “rise and fall of a gangster” stuff and the mods vs rockers setting does nothing but create a nagging reminder of how of Quadrophenia did that side of things so much better. That said the performances mostly fall on the right side of camp with Riseborough doing surprisingly well with the difficult job of making a simpering wet blanket tolerable. Reily’s all-but-inhuman monster is just believable enough to make each brutal act feel like a step in the downfall of a human being rather than an attempt to shock the audience into wakefulness but when his progression is so predictable – twenty minutes in it’s screamingly obvious that he’s bad news for everyone – it’s hard not to find your attention wandering.
The real problem here is some nice shots of seaside resort Brighton aside the whole thing feels utterly pointless. The 1947 film version at least had Richard Attenbrough as The Evilest Man Alive back when such characters could still shock and the original setting provided a solid dose of Today Tonight-style “these are the criminals that roam our streets” muck-raking voyeurism. If director Rowan Joffe absolutely had to update the story why not set it in the present day cartier tonneau replica watch
when Pinky might actually have some power to scare?
Set in a past distant enough to be quaint and with any real context for his action removed all that’s left is another by-the-numbers UK gangster flick that doesn’t get enough wrong to hate or enough right to like.
- three stars
"A long laundry list of bastardry." - that line made me read the rest of the review in the voice of Paul Keating. And it was awesome.