Peaky Blinder Movie: The Immortal Man

“Once I got nearly everything. It wasn’t enough.”

 As a reviewer, I try to avoid going easy on myself when I call a movie bad. Is it so bad that we can enjoy its terribleness? Is it just not doing what I wanted it to do? Is it failing to live up to previous iterations? Or is there truly something here that isn’t working? To duck that question, I’ll just repeat what I emailed Billie after I watched this: The Immortal Man is so bad that it’s weird. Let’s examine why.

 

We’ll start with the inciting event. Wait, no, we can’t. Season Six ended with Tommy, having realized that he wasn’t dying, striding purposefully away from the past (burning carriage, gangster life) into a future that, it seemed, would involve fighting fascists and Nazis and corruption and a whole bunch of other things. 

And maybe he did, for a bit. I don’t know, though, because the film never tells us. Instead, it picks up a few years later. Tommy (now a silver fox) is living in an abandoned mansion outside of Birmingham with nobody but Johnny Dogs and a bunch of ghosts/hallucinations to keep him company. He’s writing a book called The Immortal Man. (I'll return to that later.)

Okay, so we’ll look elsewhere for the inciting event: Duke, the son Tommy learned about in Season Six, is the current boss of the Peaky Blinders. Under this new management, they’re even “worse than you and Arthur” back in the day, according to Ada. Duke (played by Barry Keoghan, who is great) has decided to make it rich by working with Nazis. The Nazis want to create a bunch of fake British currency to mess with the economy, which was a real plan the Nazis attempted back in the day. 

We know Duke has daddy issues, because Beckett, the British Nazi go-between played by Tim Roth, brings up fathers and sons in every conversation he has with Duke. Duke even states his motivation aloud: he wants to do “something much bigger than anything my fucking dad ever did.” 

So Steven Knight has given us our conflict: can Tommy and Duke resolve their father/son issues while also defeating the Nazis? Great news—absolutely they can! In under two hours! 

However, we met Duke only briefly in Season Six. In this film, we get one scene of him being a cruel gangster, another few scenes setting up what he wants (money and paternal respect), then a quick shift of conscience: Beckett asks Duke to kill Ada (who is Duke’s aunt). Duke agrees then changes his mind at the last minute. Hooray! The prodigal son is redeemed! But Ada gets killed anyway! By Nazis! So now everyone’s invested in defeating Nazis! This time, it’s personal! 

My apologies for those sarcastic exclamation marks. 

In the middle of all this, Kaulo (played by Rebecca Ferguson) is Tommy’s new love interest: the twin sister of Duke’s now-deceased mother, Kaulo scams the families of dead veterans with seances, but also seems to have some actual connection with the world beyond. She’s scheming to pit Duke and Tommy against each other, but they were already on that path anyway. To be honest, I have almost nothing to say about this subplot, because you could remove it from the film and not lose much at all besides on nice shot of Tommy's post-coital smile. I guess her role is to cement the idea that Tommy’s hallucinations are real insight into the mystical realm. Cool. 

The film frames Kaulo as part of Tommy’s journey back to Birmingham, but the resulting sequence of events diminishes the impact of Ada’s death, because Tommy finds out about Ada’s death as he’s going to Birmingham, rather than Ada’s death being the thing that pulls Tommy out of seclusion. It’s a weird choice that feels like too many cooks in the kitchen and no one remembering to plate the main dish. In other words: I wanted Ada’s death to give us more than this amazing shot: 

For most stories, I prefer a television series to a movie. I like to live in the world for a bit, to see characters interacting in ways that communicate the nuanced meaning of quotidian interactions. A film can often feel too clockwork, like every scene was workshopped to death by people asking themselves, “how does this move the story forward?” as though the only goal of narrative was propulsion. 

What I'm trying to say is: I probably would have enjoyed all of this if I’d had more time to do so. Duke’s struggle could be interesting, spread across a season or two rather than a scene or two. I never thought I’d say this, but I would have liked more Nazis and fascists. 

And I really, really would have liked more time to orient myself in Tommy’s journey, which is so abbreviated that it feels nonsensical. Season Six: near-death experience leads to new purpose. Unseen interlude: Tommy gets so sick of Arthur’s addiction issues that he strangles him to death and then goes into hiding. Start of the film: Tommy is writing an autobiography and only brought back to the world by his rebellious son, who is doing (checks notes) exactly what Tommy said he wanted him to do (crime) but maybe in a bad way (since it’s Nazi crime). 

That’s right: Tommy’s pre-film inciting event was strangling his brother. Fratricide, one of the OG sins, is what led Tommy to a reclusive life. What?!

Like most fans, I knew Paul Anderson wasn’t going to be in the movie, and I didn’t expect a happy ending for his character. I assumed he would have died off-screen of suicide or an overdose, which is sometimes two ways of saying the same thing. I did not expect Tommy to kill him, and I just don’t believe it. 

Tommy and Arthur had a complicated relationship. Tommy used Arthur when he was convenient, and often failed to “manage” him effectively: I always think of the moment in, I think, Season Three, when Tommy told Arthur to stop taking his medicine because Tommy needed him “sharp.” But Tommy also tried to take care of Arthur, who often thought he was taking care of Tommy. Their relationship was as disastrous as you’d expect from a family like theirs, but to me it felt very real—especially the way that Arthur transferred his own desire for paternal approval onto Tommy after the events at the end of Season One. 

(At one point in the movie, Tommy says he was a bad father to all of his kids: more of a government with rules than a caring dad. In a way, that phrase explains his relationship with Arthur, too: Tommy used Arthur, who volunteered to be used, just like all those soldiers who volunteered to fight in WWI and came back broken.) (The film never comes close to making this parallel, and I'm starting to think that Stephen Knight didn't realize how complex he'd made Arthur's character arc in the series.) 

Okay, so, was Arthur’s death the real inciting event? If so, I need more convincing: Tommy managed not to kill the fascist doctor who almost tricked him into suicide in Season Six. He didn't kill Finn, whose lose lips lead to Polly's death. Surely he could have spared his brother death by strangulation. 

The movie tries to make this all add up to motivation: Tommy wants “some good to come from all of this bad" (Arthur's death, and Ada's) which means getting Duke on the right path, which somehow also means getting Duke to help Tommy die nobly as he defeats the Nazi plan to mess with the British economy. There’s a whole thing with a coin toss and some vague instructions and Tommy begging Duke to kill him, like putting an injured horse out of its misery. In case that parallel wasn’t clear, Tommy says “I am a horse” as he dies. 

Before he does so, though, he keeps writing his book, even while on a narrow boat traveling on a canal to Liverpool to defeat Nazis. (He brought a typewriter to a gunfight, lol.) In a few scenes, Tommy does a voiceover of what he is typing. For instance, leading up to the final explosive defeat of the Nazis, Tommy says “My eldest son, Duke, shall be my natural heir. But tonight will be a test which will reveal the truth about him. He is my eldest son, my dark reflection, who will write the final chapter of this story.” 

My friends, that was the thing that really broke the movie for me. Not just Arthur’s death. Not the iffy pacing and plotting. Not the confusion over what happened right after Season Six. Not even Kaulo reading Tommy’s palm and therefore establishing a character arc spanning six seasons and a movie as though we weren’t aware of what we’ve been watching all these years. My breaking point was Tommy doing a voiceover to explain the emotional arc of the film, because obviously Stephen Knight felt it wasn’t clear enough. 

It’s ham-handed. It’s silly. It’s also against the spirit of most Peaky Blinders pacing, where Tommy is always one step ahead of everyone else, including the viewers. Even usually including Alfie! Part of the appeal of any Peaky Blinders finale is realizing we, like the antagonists, have been one or two steps behind. Using Tommy’s very purple prose (“my eldest son, my dark reflection”) to clarify themes is…well, it’s just shoddy writing. 

 Here was some stuff I did love: 

 • Johnny Dogs: may we all have a Johnny Dogs in our life, or at least aspire to be a Johnny Dogs. The actor Packy Lee deserved higher billing in the cast list. 

• Stephen Graham as Hayden Staggs reminding Tommy that the Nazis have been slaughtering his people for years. Stephen Graham is so great. 

• There is one slo-mo walk featuring all our protagonists, including Curly and Uncle Charlie. I love a good slo-mo walk (this is my favorite), but this one made me realize just how old most of these guys are. 

• Ada as an MP, however improbable that might have been. I’ve always been horrified/fascinated by people during WWII hiding in subway tunnels during the Blitz, too. 

• Ada’s son Karl, who flirted with racism back in Season Six, seems to have grown into an upstanding young man. 

• Tim Roth as Beckett admitting he was cavalry during the war, “but I’m not a fucking toff” was delightful. 

• Tommy’s visions of heaven, and those he has lost, as he lay dying. 

• The final title card about the women who worked in the Birmingham munitions factory: they stayed at work during an air raid because they knew their work was important, and they were all killed by a bomb. The film “honors their memory,” which made me tear up a little--something the rest of the film did not achieve. 

The few professional reviews I read of this movie were generally positive but not glowing. The reaction on the subreddit has been mixed, to say the least. I disliked the film enough that it was difficult to force myself to watch it again for review, but if you did like the movie we’re happy to hear alternate perspectives in the comments. 

Out of respect for all the episodes of Peaky Blinders I’ve loved before, I’m going to leave this unrated.

Josie Kafka is a full-time cat servant and part-time rogue demon hunter. (What's a rogue demon?)