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‘Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man’ review: Tommy Shelby is back in business
Cillian Murphy's ruthless gangster returns from exile to face off against the Nazis in this action-packed sequel
by James Mottram · NMEPeaky Blinders creator Steven Knight has always sworn that his sweeping, Birmingham-based BBC gangster drama would conclude in World War Two. And so it comes to pass. Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, which gets a big-screen release before dropping on Netflix, begins in 1940. The Third Reich are forging £350million and have plans to crash the UK economy. Not that Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) cares. The former leader of the vicious Peaky Blinders gang is sequestered in a rural retreat and writing a book – his family all but gone.
Things change when he receives a visit from sister Ada (Sophie Rundle), who warns him that his estranged son Duke (Barry Keoghan) is now running the firm. “The world don’t give a fuck about me and I don’t give a fuck about the world,” says Duke, afflicted by Daddy issues and a chip on his shoulder bigger than a plate of McCain’s finest. He’s so up for watching the world burn, he’s struck a deal to help move the Nazis’ fraudulent loot via canal boat from Liverpool. His contact is Beckett (Tim Roth), who starts the film yelling “Heil fucking Hitler!” in an accent that suggests he’s never been near Germany in his life.
The new generation of Blinders stand to make a packet from the deal but siding with the Nazis, a group that persecutes the gang’s gypsy kin, is a move that certainly doesn’t sit well with Tommy. Inevitably, there’s a montage where Murphy dons the old threads and dusts off his Rolls Royce Phantom, (a scene very reminiscent of 007 digging out the Aston Martin in Skyfall), before he heads back to Brum to sort out this unholy mess.
While there’s action aplenty, The Immortal Man does have the feel of a final episode – where Tommy takes one last bow. “I see things,” he tells Ada. This is a film haunted by ghosts, be it Arthur’s grave or Polly’s photo. With so many of the gang now in the ground, this swansong doesn’t boast the same punk energy of the show’s early seasons. Only occasionally does it snarl and show its teeth, with flashes of the cold-blooded violence that gave it so much of an edge.
Directed by Tom Harper (the Wild Rose filmmaker helmed the final three episodes of season one back in 2013), there are some wrong turns including a cheesy sex scene between Tommy and Rebecca Ferguson’s hot-blooded Kaulo and a slightly weird father and son fight in the mud. Fans of the soundtrack will be pleased that covers of Massive Attack’s ‘Angel’ by Fontaines D.C.’s Grian Chatten and ‘Teardrop’ by Girl In The Year Above lead another indie-stuffed tracklist.
Crucially The Immortal Man feels cinematic, from WW2 bomber POVs and the explosion that rocks the Birmingham Small Arms factory to the sonorous tolling of Nick Cave’s ‘Red Right Hand’, the show’s theme. It also comes with big-screen worthy performances from a terrific cast – Murphy, Keoghan, Roth and Stephen Graham, who reappears as Hayden Stagg, last seen thieving opium in the sixth and final season back in 2022. Perhaps it’s not as emotional as you might hope but this sombre final chapter of Peaky Blinders still wraps things up as tightly as a burial shroud. And for that, we doff our razor-lined caps.
Details
- Director: Tom Harper
- Starring: Cillian Murphy, Barry Keoghan, Sophie Rundle
- Release date: March 6 (in cinemas), March 20 (on Netflix)