Plot: Birmingham, 1940. Amidst the chaos of World War II, Tommy Shelby is driven back from a self-imposed exile to face his most destructive reckoning yet. With the future of the family and the country at stake, Tommy must face his own demons, and choose whether to confront his legacy, or burn it to the ground.
Review: Of all the series I have reviewed over the years, Peaky Blinders is one that consistently fell by the wayside. A big hit with fans of Boardwalk Empire and The Sopranos, Peaky Blinders was peak Steven Knight period drama that gave Cillian Murphy an iconic role years before he won his Academy Award for Oppenheimer. The six-season Netflix series fostered fashion trends before it went off the air in 2022. Bringing back legacy cast members as well as new additions Barry Keoghan, Rebecca Ferguson, and Tim Roth, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man gives the saga of Tommy Shelby the big-screen treatment while maintaining the same violent scope and epic storytelling, compressed into just under two hours. Fans of the series will be excited to see Cillian Murphy don a three-piece suit, but the film fails to reach the heights of a full season of the small-screen version. Nevertheless, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man looks and feels more cinematic than many television-to-film continuations.
Despite being a continuation of where the series finale left off, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man often feels like a retread of elements we have seen before. Set five years after burning all of his belongings and riding away into solitude, Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) returns as World War II is beginning to impact the British Isles with bombings. There has long been a threat of nationalism and extremism within the historical context of Peaky Blinders, and seeing the impending arrival of Nazis fits within the context of the series. Tommy, older and still suffering from PTSD from World War I, is attempting to write a memoir of his life titled “The Immortal Man” to try and move on from the years of trauma he has endured. In Tommy’s absence, his son, Duke (Barry Keoghan), has risen to the challenge of running criminal enterprises in Birmingham, including stealing from British soldiers. Duke, who has a parental relationship with criminal Beckett (Tim Roth), is frustrated with his station and wants more. Hence, Tommy must return to re-establish the rightful balance of power through the Peaky Blinders.
Because this is a movie, there are new additions to the cast as well as returning favorites. Stephen Graham reprises his role as Hayden “The King of Liverpool” Stagg, while Packy Lee returns as Johnny Dogs, Ned Dennehy as Charlie Strong, and Sophie Rundle as Ada Thorne, with Rebecca Ferguson joining as twins Kaulo and Zelda. Because of the countless familiar actors from the series’ six seasons, many of whom did not survive the final season, there is a lot of time spent discussing who is not present in The Immortal Man. The power vacuum left by many of the characters also means there is a lot of time spent explaining who represents which factions and expository dialogue to help bridge the half-decade gap since the series ended. While Peaky Blinders spent a great deal of time building relationships between long-time members of the cast and each season’s new additions, it is challenging to build the same dynamic with new characters joining this story for a limited amount of screen time. It is great to see Dennehy, Lee, and Rundle, but this film hinges on the father-son relationship between Cillian Murphy’s Tommy and Barry Keoghan’s Duke. The vibe feels very similar to the chemistry between Daniel Day-Lewis and Leonardo DiCaprio in Gangs of New York, with Keoghan a perfect fit as Murphy’s son.
Where Peaky Blinders has always been strongest has been in the gritty, violent world of the 1920s and 1930s in England. The gang factions and crime families that inhabited the region have always given the series a feeling distinct from other gangster sagas. While each series only comprised six episodes, The Immortal Man still feels far too short to do justice to the story being told. The anachronistic soundtrack still remains a key element of the series, but the compressed running time does not do the story any favors. Tommy Shelby’s legacy looms large over the film, and his time away from being the head of the Peaky Blinders has not changed the man. By making the film’s predominant villains Nazis, the power dynamic shifts from criminals against authority to criminals as heroes. By making Tommy into a good guy, some of the anti-hero vibe of The Immortal Man feels out of place compared to the more punk-rock underdog-fighting-the-power vibe of the original series. This does not detract from the storytelling quality of the movie, but it does make it harder to appreciate the transformation of Tommy Shelby that long-time fans of the series will experience when they watch it.
Director Tom Harper, who helmed three episodes of the first season of Peaky Blinders, brings a cinematic quality to The Immortal Man, making it feel like more than an extended episode of the television series. Harper has worked on bigger-budget projects like the Gal Gadot spy film Heart of Stone and the Prime Video period adventure The Aeronauts, but he is right at home in the gritty, violent world of Peaky Blinders. Cinematographer George Steel lensed The Immortal Man in a way that accentuates the film’s cold, winter setting, offering triumphant, heroic shots like the image of Tommy riding on horseback used in the film’s marketing materials. Steven Knight knows these characters well at this point, and there is never any doubt that this is the next phase in the journey for Tommy Shelby, but the same cannot be said for the rest of the screenplay. The melodramatic peaks and valleys of this movie sometimes border on silly, with the feature-length running time sometimes betraying the outsized emotional reactions of the characters. There is way too much crammed into this two-hour film, and it often feels like Knight could not figure out what to focus on and what to leave out.
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is worth seeing for the absolutely fantastic performances from Cillian Murphy and Barry Keoghan. Two of the finest actors working today, seeing that they play father and son, are more than worth the price of admission. But, if you are a newcomer to the world of Peaky Blinders, you will likely feel lost as you try to orient yourself in a story set over two decades from where it started. Peaky Blinders has developed a fanbase thanks to its blend of action, violence, and drama, told through the saga of a family spanning 36 episodes. Trying to encapsulate and continue that dynamic in just 112 minutes is a daunting feat, and Tom Harper and Steven Knight do not quite make it work. The bloodbath at the core of Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is worth seeing on the big screen, but the rest of this movie could have waited until it hit streaming. A bit more time spent working on the characters, or even turning this into a shorter, seventh season, would have done better justice to the franchise.
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is now playing in theaters and premieres March 20th on Netflix.
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Source:
JoBlo.com
