Brighton Rock

When it comes to remakes, there is no tried-and-test­ed method for guar­an­tee­ing a safe return. Yet often the most suc­cess­ful are those that embody the spir­it that made the orig­i­nal stand out, while estab­lish­ing a sense of iden­ti­ty and pur­pose that is entire­ly their own.

Hav­ing assem­bled an impres­sive cross-sec­tion of British film­mak­ing tal­ent – with stal­warts and ris­ing stars account­ed for, not to men­tion a rep­utable cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er (John Math­ieson) and com­pos­er (Mar­tin Phipps) – Rowan Joffe (who’s on a career high after pen­ning the screen­play for Anton Corbijn’s The Amer­i­can) has cer­tain­ly stacked the odds in his favour.

And well he might, giv­en that he’s cho­sen to rein­ter­pret a cher­ished British nov­el and sem­i­nal film noir for his direc­to­r­i­al debut. Sad­ly, the task has ulti­mate­ly proven too big for him.

Wear­ing the scar and scowl made famous by Richard Atten­bor­ough, Sam Riley looks and acts the part as Pinkie Brown, the young sociopath hell-bent on shank­ing his way to the top of the crime pile fol­low­ing the death of his men­tor at the hands of a rival gang.

After exact­ing his own brand of eye-for-an-eye jus­tice, Pinkie finds him­self in deep bar­ney with both the law and res­i­dent cig­ar- chew­ing mob king Mr Colleoni – played with pomp by Andy Serkis, who rel­ish­es lay­ing it on thick but is fatal­ly underused.

To keep the for­mer off his tail, Pinkie woos the girl whose tes­ti­mo­ny would bring about his undo­ing. But while doe-eyed wait­ress Rose (Andrea Rise­bor­ough) might be meek and impres­sion­able at first, her grow­ing clingi­ness and uncon­di­tion­al devo­tion soon put both their lives at risk. He might be quick with a blade and lethal with a wink, but Pinkie’s not as sharp as he thinks he is.

Joffe has applied his own sig­na­ture to this Scar­face-lite tale by bring­ing the set­ting for­ward from the late-1930s to 1964; the year that the last hang­ing took place in the decade of the great British gang­ster. And it is here, cru­cial­ly, that the mods and rock­ers first inspired moral pan­ic on the streets and shore­line of South East England.

This is a peri­od rich in coun­ter­cul­tur­al iconog­ra­phy that has tra­di­tion­al­ly lent itself well to cin­e­ma, but it’s a time to which Pinkie doesn’t real­ly belong – his dis­en­fran­chise­ment at odds with the social eman­ci­pa­tion of his brawl­ing contemporaries.

Where John Boulting’s 1947 film elo­quent­ly cap­tured the voice of post-war youth, Joffe’s is fix­at­ed on Ves­pas, Bryl­creem and tai­lored suits – it’s all style and no substance.

Lack­lus­tre sup­port­ing turns fur­ther sour the mix, most notably from Helen Mir­ren and John Hurt, who come across as if they’ve stum­bled in fresh from a day’s shift pulling pints and thump­ing pun­ters down the local booz­er on some tawdry ter­res­tri­al soap. All of this amounts to one damn­ing pros­e­cu­tion against the director.

Gra­ham Greene’s orig­i­nal prose might be tricky to recy­cle with­out los­ing some of its res­o­nance, but when the indi­vid­ual com­po­nents are this strong, it’s crim­i­nal that the end prod­uct is so bland.