Brighton Rock

Sam Riley, the 31-year-old British actor, must like stepping into big shoes. His breakthrough came in 2007’s haunted Control, where he managed not only to sing like, dance like and embody Joy Division’s Ian Curtis, but also to lend the late frontman a measure of grace. Riley was far better than the film itself.

Now Riley takes on Graham Greene’s legendary antihero Pinkie Brown, confidently and with little pause, it seems, to consider how this gangster role made Richard Attenborough’s career in 1947. Again, the rising star has bettered his predecessor: This is a Pinkie whose viciousness runs counter to a delicate sense of vulnerability. Riley props himself up in his trench coat, hoping for toughness and play-acting against more believable thugs like Andy Serkis’s Mr. Colleoni. It’s the balance Leonardo DiCaprio’s been hoping to strike for years and has rarely possessed; Riley’s nailed it.

Today’s Brighton Rock, however inventively transposed from the 1930s to 1964’s mods-versus-rockers moment, can’t help but slightly disappoint, because the book is so interior. Director-adapter Rowan Joffe (son of The Killing Fields’ Roland) compensates with visual panache and a daring modification of Rose (Riseborough), the waitress and witness seduced by Pinkie out of talking. Here she’s a lot less naive, making for higher romantic stakes, if diminished humor. Regardless, this is a tough take on Greene’s source, with tart support from Helen Mirren and John Hurt, both of whom lend a regality to the dirtier proceedings. What might have been a long walk off a short pier becomes a valid, vital rethinking of a crime classic.
Extras: audio commentaries; interviews; deleted scenes and more

Brighton Rock  Madman (MA) DVD $34.95, Blu-ray $39.95

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