Brighton Rock (2010)

Pinkie is a violent, dangerous member of a mini-gang, lead by Kite and operating in Brighton in 1964. The problem is that a larger and better organized gang is already "protecting" the city. Trouble erupts when Kite is killed by Hale, a member of the Colleoni big gang.Pinkie revenges his boss and mentor, but Colleoni is not too happy about Pinkie killing Hale and thinking of being at his level of organized crime. It does seems absurd that Pinkie's gang, composed by three members plus himself can expect to be taken seriously, but Pinkie is supposed to be a psycho, disconnected from reality.To protect himself Pinkie ends up marrying Rose, a Roman-Catholic like him who witnessed part of the Hale killing. Since a wife cannot testify against the husband, Pinkie thinks he got it made, without noticing that everything is already crumbling around him. The only way out is predictably bad.The Mod/Rockers battles make for an intriguing background, despite the unrelenting gloominess of the story. Some relief is given by John Hurt and Hellen Mirren, playing relatively glamorous roles in the unglam setting. The biggest let down is the soppy endingBefore I started reading the reviews, I found this a decent British gangsters story. However, it seems that every single reviewer felt compelled to compare this with the original 1947 movie or at least, mention the Greene novel and the lack of sufficient Catholic anguish.I am a cinephile, but I did not see the 1947 movie, nor feel the need to do so, just to compare it to this. Also, I am familiar with Greene, but again, I think each work should stand on its own and this movie is OK, without being a masterpiece - apart from the silly ending.

As I was reading reviews of other viewers, it seemed that people are obsessed with the original 1947 movie. That doesn't really make very much sense. If you are truly attached to a classic movie, why bother watching a remake that by it's nature can't compete with the original. I would never watch a remake of a classic as, for example " Manchurian Candidate". You will not be able to outdo the masterpiece, so why do it? I quite enjoyed this movie. Beautifully filmed and perfectly acted film noir, set in the eventful 60's, but with the afterthought of these mind numbing times. This parable about temptation and sin, passion and guilt, belongs to a different era when the greedy and the wicked actually had some conscience left. The new monsters are missing that part completely. Talking about good old days...

Riley may be, elsewhere, a good actor, but here he's too old, too exaggeratedly creepy and sinister. It's a sour one-note performance, unrelieved by moments of humanity that might have made him, in other hands, a little bit endearing. His Pinkie spends virtually the entire film glowering menacingly at everyone, including Rose. He even glowers when he's staring into space.Richard Attenborough, in the much more satisfying 1947 version, was of course menacing as well -- Pinkie is, after all, a killer -- but at least Attenborough was much smaller physically, as well as younger and more open-faced, and displayed an occasional touch of boyish vulnerability that made Rose's falling for him fairly believable. In this bleakly charmless remake, Riley stalks through the city like a character in an Edward Gor ey cartoon, looking so grim, so downright homicidal and malevolent, that anyone of any sense would cross the street to avoid him. And he speaks in such a hoarse, croaking snarl that when he informs Rose he was once a choirboy, you feel like laughing.Which makes it all the more improbable that Rose would fall in love with him so quickly; the fact that she does so makes her seem -- in contrast to the touching, naive Rose of the 1947 version -- almost pathological and, frankly, retarded. She reminded me of the serial killer's mentally challenged girlfriend, played by Juliette Lewis, in "Kalifornia." And that Rose would actually brandish a knife at Helen Mirren's Ida and speak to her with such hostility, and that Ida would nonetheless repeatedly risk her own life on Rose's behalf... well, it all seems pretty unlikely.Also unlikely: John Hurt as the frail and elderly Corkery, talking back to Pinkie and his thug sidekick when they come for their protection money, getting -- not surprisingly -- slashed and threatened for his attitude, and yet later speaking dismissively and indeed jocularly about the young man. Pinkie is an obvious psychopath, a known killer, and makes no attempt to hide it -- in fact, he all but advertises it, it's the role he wants to play -- yet the law-abiding characters, while they disapprove of him, seem to regard him without a trace of fear.The Philip Davis character, Spicer, also seems weirdly, improbably oblivious to the danger, which is why, predictably, he winds up dead. Spicer's supposed to be a lifelong career criminal, yet he acts like a dim-witted and trusting comic-book victim who all but colludes in his own death, even returning to the gang's flat despite the fact that, hours earlier, Pinkie has rather obviously set him up and tried to have him murdered. I just don't get it.In a series of interviews on the DVD, various cast members and the writer/director spoke of their hope, indeed their fond belief, that Graham Greene would have liked this new version of his novel. I can't agree; I think it's just as well Greene was spared having to watch it.

The center of this movie is not the criminals but the waitress who happened to witness something that could put people in jail. In order to keep her quiet, Pinkie, a handsome murderer, involves himself in her life. However selfish and shallow his intentions, he brings her out and gives her purpose, happiness and challenge way beyond what she's gotten serving tea and crumpets to customers in a tea shop.By the time the girl gets a glimpse into the "real" Pinkie, she's fully committed to him and the alternative offered by well meaning people in her life has a big price tag: eradication of all her newfound joy and purpose, and a return to loneliness; now equipped with an even more battered ego than before.The film offers wonderful on-location photography of Brighton, England; and in contrast to the boring garbage of most 2011-2012 films there is not one single car blown up in the entire film.