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Brighton Rock


The critical consensus

Enough is done right to make you wish they’d made better decisions and everything looks good in this colour noir… but the central relationship lacks conviction.

***(*)(*)Andrew Lowry, Total Film, 28/01/2011

Greene fans will raise a sceptical eyebrow, but it's an adaptation brimming with enough ideas to justify this second stick of Rock

***(*)(*)Phil de Semlyen, Empire Online, 31/01/2011

Riley is no match for Richard Attenborough in the 1947 version.

**(*)(*)(*)Siobhan Synnot, The Scotsman, 01/02/2011

The film has style, verve, craft and not least a knowledge of when to lie low and let Greene's story speak for itself.

****(*)Nigel Andrews, Financial Times, 02/02/2011

On the one hand, the new film more explicitly engages with elements of the novel sidelined in the first film – the religious theme, its grubby sexual and violent content – and on the other, it finds a perfect context for the story of the rise and fall of a teenage gangster in the youth revolt of the early-60s embodied by the mods’n’rockers riots in Brighton.

****(*)Miles Fielder, The List, 02/02/2011

There are some decent set pieces, but the whole affair tends towards the over styled, and all the lightness and brightness strips the drama of its tension.

**(*)(*)(*)Alison Rowat, The Herald, 03/02/2011

Visually striking, dramatically uninvolving.

Paul Greenwood, Evening Times, 03/02/2011

A bold and exhilarating picture, summoning up, in its own way, a chill seafront breeze of guilt and shame.

***(*)(*)Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian, 03/02/2011

An eye-catchingly impressive array of British thespian talent. Trouble is, they’re all acting in different movies, most of them not very good ones.

**(*)(*)(*)Tim Robey, The Telegraph, 03/02/2011

Joffe's film nods to the novel's twisted Catholicism but never conveys that insidious mood of evil, and the plot's action, particularly in its last third, feels terribly creaky.

***(*)(*)Anthony Quinn, The Indepedent, 04/02/2011

While the action is neatly moved from the 1940s to 1964, and the film has a fitting noir look, comparisons to the original are inevitable and sobering.

**(*)(*)(*)Daily Record, 04/02/2011

A melodramatic misfire.

**(*)(*)(*)Chris Tookey, Daily Mail, 03/02/2011

It's somewhat unfortunate, then (not to mention a little ironic given the story's central motif), that Brighton Rock lacks a consistent through line. As it nears the finale, it reverts to a full-blown meditation on Catholicism, original sin and the nature of evil and buckles under the weight of religious imagery that starts to feel extraneous rather than integral to the new world in which the story finds itself.

***(*)(*)Alistair Harkness, The Scotsman, 05/02/2011

The result is a bold, stylish failure.

Philip French, The Observer, 06/02/2011

If you're looking for depth or nuance...you won't find it on this end-of-the-pier ghost train.

Nicholas Barber, The Independent on Sunday, 06/02/2011

Although excellent, it suffocates the pivotal central relationship, which by the end feels under-developed.

***(*)(*)Juliet Buchan, The Skinny, 07/02/2011


Features about Brighton Rock

Sam Riley shot to fame as the doomed Ian Curtis in Control. Now he's playing creepy Pinkie in Brighton Rock

Amy Raphael, The Guardian, 12/01/2011

Brighton Rock set report: Pier and loathing

Craig McLean, The Telegraph, 17/01/2011

Andrea Riseborough--Let's hear it for Miss Versatility

Kaleem Aftab, The Independent, 21/01/2011

Brighton Rock: appalling strangeness

Jeremy Lewis, The Telegraph, 21/01/2011

Brighton Rock: realm of the pier

Rowan Joffe, The Telegraph, 21/01/2011

No end to the affair: The torrid liaison between Graham Greene's fiction and the cinema

Boyd Tonkin, The Independent, 28/01/2011

Sam Riley: From Joy Division to Brighton Rock

James Mottram, The Independent on Sunday, 30/01/2011

Brighton Rock reconnects with the novel's central theme of Catholic guilt

Paul Dale, The List, 02/02/2011

Brighton Rock remake actress Andrea Riseborough--profile

Miles Fielder, The List, 17/02/2011

Where and when?

General release. Check local listings for show times.

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