At this point, we’re not sure what to make of writer Rowan Joffe‘s directorial debut with an adaptation of Graham Greene‘s underworld thriller “Brighton Rock.”
The film garnered fairly disappointing reviews from its screenings at the Toronto and London film festivals despite the fact the project boasted an exciting cast with rising thesps Sam Riley and Andrea Riseborough mixed with the experience of Helen Mirren and John Hurt, strong source material and a helmer who had just impressed us with his subdued script for Anton Corbijn‘s “The American,” based on Martin Booth‘s “A Very Private Gentleman.”
One review described the film as a “gorgeous-looking and yet unsatisfying film” that lacks the “pacing, plotting, and thematic convictions” of Greene’s work while another review called it a film boasting “self-conscious (and technically over-egged) noir stylings bristle against a clearly overworked script that fidgets to no effect with Greene’s plotting, with a cast that never coalesces floating somewhere amid the wreckage.”
Not exactly high praise but we’re still interested in what Joffe has created. Either way, a few new stills and video clip (despite being quite low quality) have now been unveiled in support of its upcoming U.K. release. The film, of course, follows the story of an up-and-coming gangster (Riley) in 1964, who marries a naive waitress (Riseborough) after she stumbles onto evidence linking him to a murder while an older couple (Mirren, Hurt) try to save the waitress from her marriage. Here’s a full synopsis:
Adapted from Graham Greene’s iconic 1939 novel, BRIGHTON ROCK charts the headlong fall of Pinkie, a razor-wielding disadvantaged teenager hell bent on clawing his way up through the ranks of organized crime. At the heart of the story is the anti-hero Pinkie’s relationship with Rose – an apparently innocent young 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 latterly to ensure she will not talk to the police. A love story between a murderer and a witness; 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?
“Brighton Rock” hits theaters on February 4th in the U.K. but doesn’t have a stateside release date as of yet. [Optimum Releasing/Mr. Sam Riley]