What Do The Critics Say?

"A bold and exhilarating picture, summoning up, in its own way, a chill seafront breeze of guilt and shame. It's an intelligent and creative movie, not a masterpiece, but much better than some rather disobliging reviews have suggested. Riley and Riseborough are both good, especially Riseborough, who brilliantly shows how Rose changes from being a child into a gangster's moll. This is still a bold and exhilarating picture, summoning up, in its own way, a chill seafront breeze of guilt and shame." Peter Bradshaw UK GUARDIAN "Sam Riley has been a talent to watch. Here, the actor invests the dangerously charismatic Pinkie with a brutality so casual that it's truly chilling. Brighton Rock marks the directorial debut of Joffe, and while not flawless, it's a solid affair. The unravelling of sinister acts in a seemingly idyllic beachside village works well, revealing that beauty can hide ugly truths." Cara Nash FILMINK "A few Greene purists have cried woe, but Greene would surely have loved it. Sam Riley (Control) is a perfect, creepy Pinkie. Andrea Riseborough’s Rose is a touching, blurry-featured nymph, a girl who hopes love is catching and that hers will finally infect Pinkie. 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 "An excellent cast of home-grown talent, including rising stars Sam Riley and Andrea Riseborough, who weren’t even born in the 60s, to Helen Mirren and John Hurt, who probably remember the period well. Riseborough is captivating, and Mirren and Hurt are compelling in their scenes together." Catherine Jones LIVERPOOL ECHO

"Riley is unforgettable as the young psycho whose ambition outstrips his reach, but his is only one among many excellent performances delivered by Joffe's ace cast. With a cast that includes Helen Mirren and John Hurt and a well-told tale with equal appeal to Greene and suspense fans, the savvy distributor that picks this up will be in happy possession of a potential sleeper." BOXOFFICE MAGAZINE "Joffe has retained the ending Greene and Rattigan devised for the original film; the book's ending is different, but I always preferred the film's ending, and this one works again for me. are strong performances from Helen Mirren, Andrea Riseborough and Phil Davis, among others, and Sam Riley is good too." David Stratton ABC AT THE MOVIES "This time around Sam Riley, so good in Control, plays Pinkie, the small-time crook who digs his own grave trying to destroy those who might implicate him in murder. You can't deny that the cast, which also includes Andy Serkis, Phil Davis, Sean Harris and Nonso Anozie, is more than capable. Nor that the film looks and sounds good (there's a great, pounding score from Martin Phipps)." Derek Malcolm THIS IS LONDON "Rowan Joffe's adaptation of Graham Greene's 1938 novel Brighton Rock is, in theory, precisely the kind of book to film translation we should have more of. So, congrats to first time feature film director Joffe for having the guts to drastically alter that which many would consider to be ‘untouchable’. And double congrats for delivering a visually sumptuous flick his first time at the bat." Simon Miraudo QUICKFLIX

The Inside Story When asked the inevitable question why make another "Brighton Rock", producer Paul Webster ("Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day") is quick to point out that they have not made a remake of the film, but an adaptation of the book. "It’s just a brilliant story. It features one of the greatest bad guys ever created in Pinkie Brown. Graham Greene was in love with cinema and is eminently adaptable because he writes so cinematically." As well as a knack for bringing much-loved novels to the big screen, Webster ("Atonement"), is also constantly on the look out for up and coming talent. So when writer/director Rowan Joffe first caught Webster’s attention after he had seen Joffe’s first TV drama "Secret Life", he didn’t waste any time tracking him down and making his interest known. "I'd seen "Secret Life", which was produced by Jane Featherstone at Kudos, and thought it was brilliant. So I hunted Rowan down." And? I said: "I'm there for you if you ever want to make a feature film." The idea of making another adaptation of Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock came about through Ron Halpern (Unknown"), who is in charge of exploiting StudioCanal’s back catalogue, and Will Clarke ("This Is England"), who ran Optimum in the UK. Kudos were talking to them about a number of titles they were interested in remaking, one of which was "Brighton Rock". Unbeknown to Webster at the time, Joffe’s US agent at Creative Artists Agency, Robert Bookman, who is also StudioCanal’s agent was thinking along the same lines. "There was some kind of morphic resonance going on," Webster laughs. "Suddenly all the elements came together and next thing we knew we were making the film." But Rowan was not so sure about the idea when the project was first put to him, as Webster points out. "I remember talking to Rowan at the time." And his response was? "No I couldn't possibly do it. It's such a famous film and book, it’s far too daunting; we're on a hiding to nothing. But, as I have now learnt about Rowan, he went away and thought things over in an incredibly detailed way and came back to me and said 'right, I know how to do this.' He pitched it back to me and it was a brilliant take on the original story." From StudioCanal Features’ point of view it was vital for the company’s first production project to be something unique and wholly British, as Will Clarke, at that time CEO of Optimum Releasing, explained. "We’d already identified the project as the first of our production ambitions as we wanted something unique and cinematic. We just hadn’t found the right 'take' to make us take the leap. This was until Rowan pitched us his idea for the film, which blew us away. Around the same time we were speaking with Paul Webster on a few ideas and he mentioned a great writer/director, Rowan Joffe, who had done some wonderful work that he wanted to work with. The stars seemed aligned so it was a no-brainer for us from then on in." "Just the word ‘remake’ was enough to put me off the whole idea," says Joffe, "because the original 1947 movie is, as we all know, a classic and has this extraordinary performance by Richard Attenborough which, given the time, was really quite ground-breaking." But when Rowan thought more in terms of the book, he changed his mind. "In my view, "Brighton Rock" could be considered the same way a Shakespeare play is; in that it is a strong enough work of literature that it deserves more than one adaptation. When I re-read the book I got very excited by the character of Pinkie. Very excited by his relationship with Rose and very excited by the possibility of making a movie that was truer to the book in some ways." With the original film set in 1947, did that create problems script-wise? "Obviously the original film was co-written by Graham Greene himself so to that extent we could never equal or better the authenticity of his script but because we weren’t labouring under the censorship and morals of the late forties, what we could do is make a film that was as dark, violent and as perversely sensual as the book. That was one of the reasons I thought I’d like to have a go," Joffe (who wrote the screenplay for "The American") explained. His first task when approaching the project was to decide when to set the film. "My initial thinking was do I set the movie when the book is set i.e. 1939 or try and bring it to modern day?" For many reasons setting it in the modern day didn’t work. Some were technical in that the story hinges on the playing of a record and the idea of a jumping CD didn’t seem to have the same romance, but there was a more profound reason a modern day setting wouldn’t work. "For the story of Brighton Rock to be really effective you have to believe in the idea of the innocence particularly embodied in Rose. The world we live in now is one where it is almost impossible to exist with that degree of naivety. Simply the existence of televisions in everyone’s homes and the internet and everything else meant that you couldn’t create a convincingly sheltered character, so for that reason I needed to find another way to make it modern without compromising the story." One of the other key elements of the original story was Catholicism, which was at the root of much of Greene’s writing, particularly in exploring the power of good, evil, Heaven and Hell as he did in "Brighton Rock". Therefore, perhaps surprisingly, in his original script Joffe decided to leave out any overt references to Catholicism through anxiety on the part of the investors as to how an audience might respond to it as a theme in the film. But having taken it out, everyone involved soon realised their mistake, as Webster ("The Motorcycle Diaries") explained. "Once we tried it without the emphasis of Catholicism in the story and the moral conflicts the key characters have as a result, it all fell flat on its face and it soon became clear that this was the beating heart of the story." "Greene converted to Catholicism in order to marry the woman he was passionately in love with and this engendered a life-long love/hate relationship with the Catholic Church. Saying that, Catholicism was something that fascinated him and I think something that he approached in a very human and a very intellectual manner. So it was not just a theme in "Brighton Rock" but the whole of Greene’s oeuvre and absolutely endemic to Pinkie and Rose’s characters. But also what makes "Brighton Rock" more than a crime thriller is that it’s not just the noose that Pinkie’s frightened of but the possibility of eternal damnation, which lends the story an epic scope," Joffe revealed. And your intention to stay true to the book? "The creative process behind writing the original screenplay is still something of a mystery." It was Joffe who came up with the idea of setting the film in 1964. He felt that year represented the beginning of modernity. It would still have a contemporary edge but more importantly it meant a chance to explore one of the most interesting periods of modern history in terms of the change in youth and gang culture as well as in the British legal system. "1964 was the first time in British history that teenagers flexed their muscles economically, culturally and physically. Plus of course Brighton was the setting of the quasi-riots between emerging teenage Mods and older Rockers, which contextualizes Pinkie’s 'youth rebellion' perfectly. 1964 was a year after off-track gambling was legalized." In fact, the Sixties was the era of the great British gangster, the kind of working class hero that the frightened and ambitious Pinkie longs to be seen as. It was also the last year in which the death penalty was actively carried out. The threat of hanging would be a crucial motivation in Pinkie’s desperate attempts to get rid of witnesses to his revenge killing. So it just seemed an almost God-given year to set the film in. I will never know if Graham Greene would have approved but it was a very Greene-like time to tell the story. Next up for the film-makers was to find their Pinkie and Rose. "Despite inhabiting them more than sixty years ago, Richard Attenborough left some pretty big shoes to fill in terms of finding a 'Pinkie' for the film. "The biggest fear I had when I was writing and as we began casting was that I wouldn’t find a Pinkie. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to find a better Pinkie than Attenborough but I felt that if mine was not at least equal to him in some way then the movie would get a critical panning, so I was very nervous about who to cast," Joffe recalls. Sam Riley, who played Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis for Anton Corbijn in the 2007 production, "Control", would set his mind at ease. "The minute he walked in I thought 'my God, this an actor unlike any other English actor alive today.' He is someone with all the charisma and good looks of Alan Delon but he’s also got a kind of edge and a mischief and occasionally a demonic ability too. There’s something wonderfully shrewd and manipulative about the Pinkie that Sam has managed to deliver and I knew pretty much the minute I met him that I wanted to offer him the part." Sam Riley had read the original book when he was 12 or 13 but when he heard the project was in the pipeline he jumped at the chance to go for the part. "I think I probably fantasized about being Pinkie when I read the book if I’m honest! But I remember hearing that there was a script floating around for it and that they were resetting it in the 60’s, which I thought was possibly risky, but I read it and I loved it. It’s one of the great fictional characters and parts like that for guys my age rarely come about. So I was very eager to get it. If I could pick a part, I think most young guys would say exactly the same thing. You’d play someone that’s not particularly sympathetic, wearing fantastic suits with a scar on your face, a flick knife and a bottle of acid in your pocket. I get to cut up John Hurt and I get to play with Helen Mirren and Andrea Riseborough. I had pick-pocketing lessons; I had to do a scooter test. Plus I’ve always wanted to be in a 60’s gangster movie with slick hair! I was in hog heaven." The casting of Andrea Riseborough as Rose was not so easy. "Well the truth of the matter is, there were two actresses who really stood out for me as potential Roses," Joffe revealed. One was Carey Mulligan and the other was Andrea Riseborough and it was almost impossible to choose between the two. But Carey was unable to do the movie because she did "Wall Street 2" so it was not difficult to cast Andrea instead because she was someone I’d always felt enormously connected to." Riseborough (Brenda in "Made in Dagenham") fell in love with Rose the minute she read the script. "My love affair with Rose was the driving force in terms of wanting to do the project. I just felt like it was very natural; it was like when I was reading it she was speaking in my head from the very first moment. She's so pure and so true, not in a way that is pious or trite or irritating, but she has a hope and a belief in good. The tragedy is that things don't always work out as you hope they will, but the hope she has and the unfaltering devotion and bravery are extraordinary qualities in any person." What's It All About?

On a dark rainy night in the depths of Brighton’s underbelly, a frantic phone call goes unanswered. It will lead to gang leader Kite being caught on his own by a bunch of rival gang members and killed by the wayward blade of Fred Hale. Bent on revenge and mourning the loss of their leader, his gang start to make their plans, particularly Pinkie Brown, the youngest member of the gang who saw the murdered Kite as a father figure. At the heart of the story is the anti-hero Pinkie’s relationship with Rose, an apparently innocent, young tearoom waitress who stumbles on evidence linking Pinkie and his gang to a revenge killing that Pinkie commits. After the murder, Pinkie seduces Rose, first in an effort to find out how much she knows and later, to ensure she will not talk to the police. Can Pinkie trust Rose or should he kill her before she talks to the police? Can Rose trust Pinkie or is she next in line?

The Verdict "Those who are old enough to remember the youth riots in the U.K. and the battles on our own soil between the 'Sharpies' (MODS) and the 'Rockers' (MOTOR CYCLE GANGS), will enjoy the new era (1964), direcor/writer Rowan Joffe has chosen to set this second adaptation of the iconic Graham Greene novel in. The setting, Brighton, will also bring memories flooding back to many of those who left the Old Dart behind in the sixties and seventies for a new life down under. The first adaptation of Greene's novel was made in 1947, a time when Britian was still recovering from WW2. Helmed by then future BAFTA winner John Boulting, it starred Richard Attenborough (Pinkie), Carol Marsh (Rose) and Hermione Baddeley (Ida). While the 1947 version is regarded as a classic, making any comparing between the two productions would be (to say the least), bloody useless! As a baby boomer I certainly haven't seen it and as a first release cinema experience I'd doubt there are too many living now who did. "Brighton Rock" is a british gangster (make that wanna-be gangster) film populated by some familiar faces: John Hurt, Helen Mirren, Philip Davis, Sam Riley, Andy Serkis and Andrea Riseborough; all of whom give a very good account of themselves in their particular roles. The setting is dark and seedy. Riley ("Franklyn") plays the centrepiece in the film: Pinkie. Riley's rendering of Pinkie instils many of the traits that define what a sociapth is, including: incapacity for love; a lack of remorse, shame or guilt and of course, criminal versatility. Mirren as Ida (with flamimg red hair and wrinkles) is a sight to see. Davis (recently seen in ABC TV'S "Whitechapel") as Spicer, plays it straight. He recognizes the imminent danger Pinkie presents: not only to Rose; but all the gang's members. Serkis (who will next be seen with Simon Pegg in "Burke and Hare") ensures his Mr Colleoni is indeed, interesting. "Brighton Rock" is a quirky film, which at times, gives the impression that some of the cast have almost reverted to 'method acting'. It's those overwraught moments that drive the film at an foreboding pace. The audience is almost: dragged along; trying to keep up with Pinkie's movements. "Brighton Rock" is certainly an interesting tale. 3 1/2 STARS." Who Is Playing Who?

Sam Riley Andrea Riseborough Helen Mirren John Hurt Andy Serkis Sean Harris Philip Davis Steven Robertson Nonso Anozie Maurice Roëves Steve Evets Adrian Schiller Mark Cooper Harris Kenneth Collard John Warman Dennis Banks Andre Hopley Melissa Stepney Lexy Howe Michael Daniels Andrew Care

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Pinkie Rose Ida Phil Corkery Mr Colleoni Hale Spicer Crab Dallow Inspector Mr Wilson Registrar Detainee Clergyman Policeman Bell Drinker Waitress Borstal Girl 2 Police Detective Policeman

The Production Team Directed by Rowan Joffe Adapted from the Graham Greene novel "Brighton Rock" Screenplay by Rowan Joffe Produced by Paul Webster Original Music by Martin Phipps Cinematography by John Mathieson Film Editing by Joe Walker Casting by Shaheen Baig Production Design by James Merifield Art Direction by Paul Ghirardani & Kellie Waugh Costume Design by Julian Day Run Time 110 minutes Rated MA15+ [AUST] Copyright ©2011 - Madman Films - All Rights Reserved ©1999-2011 - The Movie Pages & Impact Internet Services - All Rights Reserved. Protected by Australian & International Copyright, Trademark Laws & Intellectual Property Rights.