Rowan Joffe’s Brighton Rock is an adaptation of Graham Greene’s thriller of the same name, which was first made into a film back in 1947. In the new version (set in 1964, not the novel’s 1938), a young gangster with the great name of Pinkie Brown (played by Control’s Sam Riley) takes up with a sweet waitress named Rose (Andrea Riseborough), who’s so in love with him, she’s willing to overlook the fact that he’s a total sociopath. See, Pinkie’s murdered someone, Rose knows something, and a redheaded Helen Mirren’s all up in their business (“Pinkie Brown killed a man and that puts the girl in the most grave danger!”). The goings-on and relationships aren’t all that easy to parse, but that’s possibly because we were totally distracted by how much Riseborough looks like Chrissy Seaver and kept expecting Kirk Cameron to jump out at any minute and tell Pinkie to start being nice to his sister.
