Directed By Tom Harper

Starring – Cillian Murphy, Rebecca Ferguson, Barry Keoghan

The Plot – During World War II, Tommy Shelby (Murphy) returns to a bombed Birmingham and becomes involved in secret wartime missions based on true events, facing new threats as he reckons with his past and rising national stakes.

Rated R for violence/bloody images, adult language throughout, some drug use and nudity.

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man | Official Trailer | Netflix

POSITIVES

Having never seen a single episode of Peaky Blinders, there was an initial hesitation towards attempting the film that had me curious if I would even be capable of investing in its plot or involved characters, but as a testament to series creator Steven Knight’s impeccable writing, I found The Immortal Man to be the best kind of scintillating slow-burn storytelling that allows the film to succeed as a self-contained engagement in the bigger picture of this six season world-building, making this a fully engrossing and digestibly effortless experience that certainly paves the way for me to seek out the entirety of the Netflix-helmed series. Knight’s dissection of these characters is most crucially evident in the ways we learn and grow with them, particularly that of Murphy’s Tommy, who not only lives a haunted life with the ghosts of his loved ones literally and figuratively persisting in his cottage, but also finds himself plagued by the inevitability of confrontation with his gangster son, who now runs the Peaky Blinders, and while Knight never absolves or evades any of the awful things that Tommy has done in what feels like a past life, instead utilizing them as turned stones to convey the air of his many cryptic motivations, the writer is able to breed the kind of vital empathetic value towards the design of the character that makes him this irresistible force of nature among a world of relentless thieves, constructing an ideally established protagonist whose unshakeable confidence and stirring conscience succeeds in grounding him as realistically honest and vulnerable as possible, while now forcing him to confront the unfinished business of his past that serves as the only key to his eventual closure. This presents an intriguing angle to the justification of this additional chapter that keeps it from feeling excessively exploitative or just another shameless cash grab among proven properties, particularly in the surprising abundance of unresolved conflict for Tommy that coincides with his own turbulently distant relationship with his morally shallow son. What’s surprising isn’t necessarily the abundance of accessible opportunity that stems from a highly successful series that ran for six seasons, but rather how seamlessly smooth Knight’s script doesn’t alienate the inexperienced first-timers in the audience who might not even remotely grasp the extensive histories of these many characters, yet never struggle with digestible exposition spawned from naturally articulated conversations between characters, touching on just enough contextual relevance for the intimacy of this specific story without the incessant requirement to drown on too long researching six seasons of information. Beyond the script, the direction here from Tom Harper feels like it continuously rises to the occasion in conveying the scope and stakes of the established world, featuring an incredible allowance of production values for Netflix that feels mountains ahead of the many action-of-the-week movies that they produce simply to fill content. Everything from the particulars of fashion trends and automobiles, to George Steel’s thickly ominous cinematography, to even the collection of demolished sets, gives the movie a distinct imprint of wartime textures and foreboding atmosphere that effectively conjure the danger and paranoia of England during World War II, without anything even minimally compromising to squander the big screen appeal that the production works tirelessly towards attaining. On the aforementioned devastation, while Peaky Blinders has rarely ever been categorized as an action-first series, the backdrop of this infamously immense war inspires it to rise to the occasion with these intensely crafted sequences that impact anyone and anything in their paths, helmed by just enough shaking camera captivity and boldly absorbing sound mixing that consistently gauges the spontaneity of these tragically unforgiving attacks with the clarity of Harper’s scope, with only the magnitude of the corrosive flames being artificially enacted by the kind of stunning C.G deposits that attain believability when it matters the most. While the action is essentially just a pawn to the bigger game transpiring between Western Europe and the Nazi regime, for the time, it does indulge in a gut-wrenching pay-off of a climax that feels like the culmination of a series of trains converging on the tracks of one intended destination, bringing with it all of the promised fireworks of inevitability between its characters, while surmising a surprising toll to the movie’s resolution. While on the subject of production, I also want to commend the movie’s many unorthodox soundtrack choices for breathing lyrical life into so many of the thematic impulses of the sequences that they abrasively accompany, with these modern artists of Indie and industrial rock appraising a distinct personality that works surprisingly well with the overall presentation. The Immortal Man certainly isn’t the first movie to use modern songs in historical settings, but it does so with the attitude and introspection that make it feel like a character of its own within the movie, and one that corresponds brilliantly with the danger and ferocity of Knight’s established world of gangster dominance, with each of the British-bred assembled artists evoking something cunningly maniacal to the inescapable circumstances of these characters. Lastly, while only a few actors from the original show find their way to the movie, the new additions involving Rebecca Ferguson, Tim Roth, and especially Barry Keoghan each evoke these big screen presences that openly grasp the complexity in their air of their respective characterizations, easing effortlessly into this world in ways that feel like they’ve been a part of it for decades. Keoghan’s surprisingly restrained emotional registry as Duke is optioned for palpable immaturity of what is basically a child in a man’s body, with his unresolved daddy issues forcing him to seek approval from others, in order to solidify his purpose in the world, and while Barry revels in the discomforts of a scene that would make lesser actors wince with cringe, he continuously rises to the occasion with a character whose moral ambiguity drifts on for a lot longer than you might expect, based on who he’s related to, giving Keoghan the proverbial keys to the city to mold this familiar character in ways that he sees fit. As good as the supporting cast are, however, it’s ultimately Cillian Murphy who once again proves why he is one of the most methodically gripping actors working today, proving that he hasn’t lost a step towards depicting the inescapable turmoil of a character convicted to a life of suffering. While this is an older version of Tommy than audiences are typically used to, the persistence of swagger and fearlessness still persist in his aging exterior, surpassed only by intimately isolated scenes where Murphy revels in the misery of Tommy’s memories, with the weight of restlessness taking him to the deepest waters that nearly sink his subconscious.

NEGATIVES

Not everything is pitch perfect with this new installment to the Peaky Blinders franchise, as the script, while executed commendably by Knight, does take on growing pains in the form of inferior aspects that will undeniably account more damage towards longtime enthusiasts of the series, on account of its inability to justify the inclusion of familiar characters outside of Tommy, who essentially just feel like glorified cameos. While this is undeniably Tommy’s story, first and foremost, I feel like some subplots could’ve been added to not only give the film the TV-like consistencies that its fandom grew up on, but also more for those characters to do that doesn’t involve them feeling like pawns in Tommy’s game, in turn helping to give the scope of the film more avenues of exploit that could keep the film and its structure from feeling so repetitious to audiences with the briefest of attention spans. Beyond this, my only other problem with the film pertained to its creative deviation around the movie’s midway point, where the promised confrontational inevitability between father and son is abruptly exchanged for an entity of an antagonist that feels safe for any movie, but especially one set in and around World War II. Without spoiling anything, I can express that my disinterests in this shift essentially comes down to the interested in opportunity to experience Tommy grappling with the notion that much has changed about the Peaky Blinders, with him coming to scrub it back to respectability, as well as this underlining redemptive story for Duke that feels so underutilized in the execution of his character evolution that it doesn’t attain any semblance of emotionality when the turn materializes, leaving me wishing that the movie had stayed the course instead of deciding to have its cake and eat it too. For my money, it feels like a couple of scenes involving Duke are missing from this finished version, particularly ones involving a tenderly compassionate moment between father and son, as without those we’re kind of forced to believe that Duke has changed for the better, with very little evidence to the thesis, in turn making me feel hopeless for the future of the Peaky Blinders.

OVERALL
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is an unmistakably grim and propulsive coda of the Shelby family saga that not only captures a grand scope of horrifying history in its wartime recounting, but also conjures an intimately haunting delve into the isolation of a restless man now consumed by the ghosts of his regrets, with only his ties to his torturous past optimistically enabling his desire for a future. Unlike most movie additions of popular TV shows, Steven Knight justifies the movie’s existence with impeccable production values and meaningful performances of the most committed kind, and despite some periodic hiccups in the creativity of its exploration that will inevitably test the patience of longtime enthusiasts, it’s nevertheless a high stakes cinematically somber prologue that lives and thrives by its own frenetic formula, serving as a bittersweet goodbye that fires on all cylinders until the very last bullet

My Grade: 8.3 or B+