BRIGHTON ROCK

dMYD

Starring Sam Riley

Trailer

M

ADAAAAAAAPSHUN! People who read are better than you and they’re after your respect. When you read a book before seeing the film adaption you’re delivered bragging rights from on high like a cackling, screeching cultural harpy: ‘Dah dah dah dah dah, subtlety, blah smack blah, depth of narrative, gurrrrrnnnnn. And if you haven’t read any of the words? You get this:

Brighton Rock is arty melodrama transplanted to boring old Britain. There’s nothing wrong with seeing seafronts and scumholes you’re familiar with from gigs and gay walks shot up like a modern film noir; you might even get a giddy little thrill the first time Pinkie runs the pebbles under the pier. Ooh look, I’ve been there. And now it’s on a screen, right in front of me. Am I famous? Does that count? What? But then the novelty wears off. Not gripping enough for a thriller, not involving enough for a drama, it’s a sad, self-contained little morality play about two people with no moral leanings whatsoever, a bad-boy gone worse and a bored girl content to kiss up to a psychopath to escape the humming and drumming that make up her half-life. There’s no real weight to the whole thing, least of all the petty insouciance of Pinkie himself; you never get a real sense that he’s a man with his life ahead of him running from the gallows, no depth deeper than the blank stares and petulant sneers that pass for character. There’s a thrilling battle between teenage freedom and Catholic guilt in here somewhere, a daring essay to be argued on the morality of the old world versus the possibilities of the twentieth century youth explosion. But it’s probably all trapped in the dusty old pages of a book by Graham Greene that a Pinkie would never read.

Then again in a few weeks NICHOLAS CAGE FIGHTS SATAN WHILST DRIVING A CAR THAT’S ON FIRE.