‘All of us dead, except the one who wants to be dead...’
Peaky Blinders has gone from cult favourite to cultural phenomenon to ubiquitous saturation. When someone is opening a Peaky Blinders-themed bar in my hometown of Doncaster, you know that it’s past its sell-by date. The last couple of seasons of the TV show were underwhelming and the whole concept has started to feel a little tired. In steps Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, the final chapter in the Tommy Shelby story. And it’s… fine…
Following the death of most of his family (including his brother Arthur, who is unceremoniously killed off-screen), Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) is even more disconsolate than usual. Having retreated from public life, Tommy is living as a recluse in the countryside but is forced to return to Birmingham when his bastard gypsy son, Duke Shelby (Barry Keoghan), the new leader of the Peaky Blinders, gets himself into a spot of bother with Tim Roth’s Nazi sympathiser, John Beckett. Elsewhere, Rebecca Ferguson and Stephen Graham are totally wasted as a bland gypsy temptress and a forgettable Liverpool dock worker, respectively and Packy Lee returns as Tommy’s right-hand man, Johnny Dogs, who may or may not be a ghost.
Now, I must stress that people who have loved Peaky Blinders throughout its run, The Immortal Man will no doubt go down as a success. The film absolutely delivers more of the same. This is perhaps unsurprising as director Tom Harper was also at the helm for many of the episode of the TV show. Steven Knight also returns on writing duties and so The Immortal Man often feels like one long episode rather than a feature film. In fairness, that is partly due to the fact that the show itself is so cinematic but even so Harper never really justifies the leap from the small screen to the cinema. My issue with Peaky Blinders is that it has long since become a parody of itself. Even Murphy, the man who has always seemed more committed to this character, seems faintly bored with stepping into the flat cap and waistcoat again for this one. I’m a fan of Keoghan’s, and he fits nicely into this world, but his performance isn’t the shot in the arm required to lift Peaky Blinders off life support.
The Immortal Plan is more Peaky Blinders. Is it doing anything new, however? Not really. The time has come to lay Tommy Shelby and his gang of knife-wielding thugs to bed.
