Fridae

Anyone who has yet to read the great novels of Graham Greene is a person worthy of my envy because there is nothing like reading his masterworks for the first time. Firmly among the Twentieth century’s greatest novelists, Greene wrote with poignancy about the moral and political ambivalence of the modern world. While ostensibly thrillers, many of his novels are also filled with characters that are fascinating due to their complexity: adulterers who are lovers, killers who are spiritual, saviours who are punishers, criminal masterminds that are romantics.

Needless to say, Greene’s mastery of the basics of storytelling has allowed his material to be turned into some of the best films ever, not the least of which are Carol Reed’s brilliant adaptations of The Third Man and The Fallen Idol. Brighton Rock, itself previously filmed with Richard Attenborough in the lead and set in prewar Brighton, now receives a cool new update.

The new adaptation is set in postwar Brighton, 1964. The mod and rocker subcultures had reached their apex as Beatlemania dawned upon the world and the restless youth of Europe were churning furiously. A fitting update considering that in real life it was during this era that Greene’s literary rival Anthony Burgess had just published his masterpiece of social collapse and youth violence, A Clockwork Orange.

In this turbulent time, a gang war rages across Brighton’s underworld. Pinkie Brown (Sam Riley), is a ruthless, vicious young thug. Seemingly driven by a powerful rage of unknown origin, Brown is an impenetrable cipher who bears more than a passing resemblance to Burgess’ similarly sociopathic protagonist Alex De Large. After killing Fred Hale, an accomplice to the murder of his mentor, Pinkie sets about to silence the only possible witness to his crime, the sweet-natured Catholic waitress Rose (the beautiful and very scene-stealing Andrea Riseborough), who holds the evidence to the crime in the form of a photo that she took with Hale moments before his death. Pinky comes into conflict with Ida Arnold (Helen Mirren), a courageous and vivacious local busybody who wants nothing more to bring him to justice.

Writer-director Rowan Joffe is no stranger to complex characters and the film noir aesthetic, having written the screenplay for the Noir-ish thriller The American last year. In Brighton Rock, he creates a world of lurking menace under the festive yet turbulent atmosphere of 60s Britain. Scenes where a mod-rocker brawl provides perfect cover for a murder under a pier and where Pinkie steals a scooter and fits right in with a group of mods making their rounds hint that Pinkie may just be another monster, living in a very monstrous time, and therefore really not that out of the ordinary. And overhanging all this is the sinister Colleoni (Andy Serkis), a gangster who is about to go straight into the gaming industry and thereby become a respectable businessman and community pillar.

In addition to being a stylish, brutal thriller that genuinely thrills, the film’s moral complexity also defies the rules that plague so much of contemporary cinema and fans of good strong character-driven drama will find much to discuss and debate over the moral quandaries facing each character and their responses. Those looking for thought-provoking entertainment will not be disappointed, as Graham Greene’s classic thriller gets another solid, smashing adaptation.