John Boulting's 1947 adaptation of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock, based off a screenplay by Greene and the dramatist Terence Rattigan, is a tough picture, shot through with brilliant aesthetic and emotional corrosiveness. By tough, I don't mean that it is an especially challenging or groundbreaking work: The film, like the novel, is an entertainment first and foremost, albeit a savage and tremendously effective one. As crime films go, you'd be hard-pressed to find such a ruthless picture, one driven by a hoodlum born of pure menace and heartless manipulation. When I say tough, it is to say that Boulting's Brighton Rock never buckles under the hope of retribution, consistently scoffs at the trappings of romance and lust, and leaves you torn up, wrecked and begging for more by the end of its stunningly tight 92 minutes.
The fact that Rowan Joffe's update of Brighton Rock, which the director also wrote, is not only lacking the brawny, ferocious tone but also a wholly antiseptic undertaking is disquieting but doesn't fully explain why Mr. Joffe's film is such an out-and-out failure. It certainly isn't the fault of the source material, which remains largely focused on a conniving, low-level hood named Pinkie (Sam Riley) who slaughters his way to the top of his small crew in the wake of his boss's death. The key to his ascent, as in the original film, is the silencing of a witness, Rose (Andrea Riseborough), a sheepish, shy waitress who saw one of Pinkie's associates stab Fred (Sean Harris, a wonderful, nervy presence), a rival gang member. Rather than simply stick her, however, Pinkie marries her and weaves a deeply troubling "us vs. them" scenario that she buys hook, line, and sinker. Only the maternal wisdom of Rose's boss, boozy yet focused Ida (Helen Mirren), seems to bring out the cracks in Pinkie's scheme.
The trajectory is ostensibly the same, even down to the devastating finale, but the dread and decay felt so strongly in Attenborough's pitch-perfect embodiment has vanished. What happened? The transplanting of the story from the 1930s to the mods vs. rockers clashes of the 1960s is negligible but is essentially pointless, unless one is to consider it a (weak) allegory for the clashes between Pinkie, his colleagues, and Brighton's criminal kingpin (the great Andy Serkis, in a brief role). But even if that is so, it is merely a bit of fat and never really obstructs the would-be drive of the central narrative. No, the problem here is the manner in which Pinkie's pursuit of power and his tragic relationship with Rose is laid out for us, which is to say the blame lies almost solely at Mr. Joffe's feet. The filmmaker, son of director Roland Joffe, has perfectly calibrated his aesthetic, in lighting and color specifically, to the scrubbed-down hues of a car commercial, giving everything a high-gloss sheen that makes even the most retro details look plastic and unconvincing. Shots of Pinkie's grimy apartment flat complex -- a spectacular, evocative set-piece in Boulting's original -- look like nothing so much as the setting for an Aeropostale catalog photo shoot.
Indeed, the film is too vacuously pretty to invoke any time but the present, which seems ever-present even in the dynamic shared between Rose and Pinkie. We are no longer given the daunting task of being in Pinkie's corner, watching him gleefully turn the screws on a wife he flat-out hates and plot the deaths of those above him on the ladder. Instead, Joffe has baited this fascinating relationship with simple, near-histrionic sympathy for a good girl suckered by a bad boy, making Riley's serpentine performance feel all the more uneven and unconvincing. The film deals with some nasty people with ugly agendas but refuses to be ugly in any single way, and the whole production subsequently feels like a coming attraction for itself.
This would all seemingly mean that Boulting's version is the definitive cinematic telling of Brighton Rock and to be honest, it's hard to argue otherwise. Still, there are great, even canonical films that have begat different but inarguably strong remakes -- Steven Soderbergh's Solaris traveled in less cerebral terrain than Tarkovsky's masterpiece but remains a majestic work of modern science fiction and an enveloping study of grief. But Joffe's Brighton Rock is yet another film that gives remakes a bad name -- even for optimists such as myself. A new cast, an inflated budget, and a game crew are here put at the service of doing nothing more than draining the venom out of a pair of hungry fangs.
The fact that Rowan Joffe's update of Brighton Rock, which the director also wrote, is not only lacking the brawny, ferocious tone but also a wholly antiseptic undertaking is disquieting but doesn't fully explain why Mr. Joffe's film is such an out-and-out failure. It certainly isn't the fault of the source material, which remains largely focused on a conniving, low-level hood named Pinkie (Sam Riley) who slaughters his way to the top of his small crew in the wake of his boss's death. The key to his ascent, as in the original film, is the silencing of a witness, Rose (Andrea Riseborough), a sheepish, shy waitress who saw one of Pinkie's associates stab Fred (Sean Harris, a wonderful, nervy presence), a rival gang member. Rather than simply stick her, however, Pinkie marries her and weaves a deeply troubling "us vs. them" scenario that she buys hook, line, and sinker. Only the maternal wisdom of Rose's boss, boozy yet focused Ida (Helen Mirren), seems to bring out the cracks in Pinkie's scheme.
The trajectory is ostensibly the same, even down to the devastating finale, but the dread and decay felt so strongly in Attenborough's pitch-perfect embodiment has vanished. What happened? The transplanting of the story from the 1930s to the mods vs. rockers clashes of the 1960s is negligible but is essentially pointless, unless one is to consider it a (weak) allegory for the clashes between Pinkie, his colleagues, and Brighton's criminal kingpin (the great Andy Serkis, in a brief role). But even if that is so, it is merely a bit of fat and never really obstructs the would-be drive of the central narrative. No, the problem here is the manner in which Pinkie's pursuit of power and his tragic relationship with Rose is laid out for us, which is to say the blame lies almost solely at Mr. Joffe's feet. The filmmaker, son of director Roland Joffe, has perfectly calibrated his aesthetic, in lighting and color specifically, to the scrubbed-down hues of a car commercial, giving everything a high-gloss sheen that makes even the most retro details look plastic and unconvincing. Shots of Pinkie's grimy apartment flat complex -- a spectacular, evocative set-piece in Boulting's original -- look like nothing so much as the setting for an Aeropostale catalog photo shoot.
Indeed, the film is too vacuously pretty to invoke any time but the present, which seems ever-present even in the dynamic shared between Rose and Pinkie. We are no longer given the daunting task of being in Pinkie's corner, watching him gleefully turn the screws on a wife he flat-out hates and plot the deaths of those above him on the ladder. Instead, Joffe has baited this fascinating relationship with simple, near-histrionic sympathy for a good girl suckered by a bad boy, making Riley's serpentine performance feel all the more uneven and unconvincing. The film deals with some nasty people with ugly agendas but refuses to be ugly in any single way, and the whole production subsequently feels like a coming attraction for itself.
This would all seemingly mean that Boulting's version is the definitive cinematic telling of Brighton Rock and to be honest, it's hard to argue otherwise. Still, there are great, even canonical films that have begat different but inarguably strong remakes -- Steven Soderbergh's Solaris traveled in less cerebral terrain than Tarkovsky's masterpiece but remains a majestic work of modern science fiction and an enveloping study of grief. But Joffe's Brighton Rock is yet another film that gives remakes a bad name -- even for optimists such as myself. A new cast, an inflated budget, and a game crew are here put at the service of doing nothing more than draining the venom out of a pair of hungry fangs.
