Pinkie (Sam Riley) is a young thug rising up the power ladder of the Brighton underworld in the early 1960s (the book was originally set in the 1930s). He seems to have absolutely no ties to society, no family or friends and no ability to trust anyone of his mobby cohorts. He is, however, a Catholic, at least in name, though he seems oblivious to sin or any sort of real religious practice. He's a total wild card who might strike out violent at any moment.
As the film opens, he witnesses the murder of his gang boss and mentor by a rival gang and decides to kill the assailant. When he does this, a naïve young woman, Rose (Andrea Riseborough), sees him and he decides the only way to protect himself and his gang is to get her to fall in love with him to make sure she won't tell the cops what she saw. As the two start spending time together, Rose's boss in her tea house, Ida (Hellen Miren), begins to understand that Pinkie is dangerous for Rose, though she can't convince her to dump him.
As all the mob action is going on, there's a war between the Mods and the Greasers, with a totally over-the-top Vespa-riding sequence ripped out of Quadrophenia (or The Young Girls of Rochefort). Though this really doesn't relate well to the greater story, it does allow for more gang violence and looks pretty cool.
Almost everything we see in Brighton is dirty and ugly. There's a scrappy quality to both Rose and Pinkie, her hair is always disheveled and never looks washed, his room in his boarding house and the apartment she lives in with her parents are totally falling apart and filthy. Its hard not to notice that Britain was in the middle of very tough economic times during this era. Meanwhile, Joffe does a great job, though of showing how Pinkie and his gang live in squalor, while the rival gang boss, Colleoni (Andy Serkis) lives in the posh environment of a fancy, sleek hotel.
There is a constant sense that Pinkie is dangerous and unbridled by "societal norms". He cuts people and takes power without any sense of decency or morals. He speaks to Rose about his Catholicism (though much less then he does in the book) and how it's the only thing that makes sense to him, the only thing that he finds reliable. It's never totally clear, however if he's doing this to sell himself to her (and her family) or if he really believes it.
He seems to be like the character of the Misfit in Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find, where he's got religion figured out to use it for his dark ends. I can imagine Pinkie explaining that he'll be forgiven for his sins when he dies, but in the meantime, he will keep killing. Sadly, he never seems self-aware or deep enough to have such an interesting thought.
The acting throughout the film is fantastic, most notably Riley and Riseborough. They both seem like kids who are in love. She has no self-confidence and understandably things that Pinkie is the best she can get; he's conniving in the short run and thinks he can out-maneuver anyone who comes his way. They're a great pair, filled with young angst and a bit cheeky that they know what they're doing is wrong.
Joffe really does bungle the ending here, drawing it out to a silly 15 minutes, when it could end in one and then giving us a sad and disconnected idea of Rose's victimhood. I wish he had ended it about four times before he did (or rearranged the kicker into a different part of the script). Really the whole second half of the film (after the Mods and Rockers riot) is a forgettable mess, though it still looks good and has some redeeming elements.
Joffe does admirable job directing this film, using really great editing to give a constant sense of violence lying just below a peaceful surface and updating the film noir model. His real problems here are in his script (well, his adapted script), where characters are underwritten and scenes are misplaced in the narrative or unnecessary altogether.
Stars: 2.5 of 4
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