The power of the Netflix movie Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, hangs off the haunted cheekbones of Cillian Murphy, so of course it’s doing very well. The hit film functions as a final send-off to Murphy’s antihero Tommy Shelby of the long-running BBC-to-Netflix series Peaky Blinders, which became a global phenomenon. Tommy began the series as a World War I veteran returning home to the mean streets of Birmingham, England, imbued with violence and trauma and ready to channel it into heading up the Peaky Blinders, an Irish-Roma gang that eventually rules the streets as a formidable criminal enterprise that crosses over into powerful political status as well.
By the time of The Immortal Man, it’s 1940, and middle-aged, world-weary Tommy Shelby has done so many heinous things; he’s abandoned the Peaky Blinders and retreated to his decaying manor house with only his loyal aide-de-camp Johnny Dogs (Packy Lee) for company. There Tommy writes his morbid memoirs and sees the ghosts of his familial dead all over the house and grounds.
The older Tommy gets, the more beautifully haggard he looks. It’s hard to think of more romantic shots than Cillian Murphy as Tommy encountering reproachful spirits in the foggy countryside. Those desponding lake-blue eyes and all.
Meanwhile, Nazis are trying to conquer England, through bombing raids and other more insidious schemes via their turncoat representative in the UK, cynical Brit agent John Beckett (Tim Roth). He’s got a plan to flood the British monetary system with counterfeit currency, and he finds a willing accomplice in Tommy’s estranged son Duke Shelby (Barry Keoghan), who’s running the Peaky Blinders with nihilistic abandon. Everyone agrees that no one can bring loose cannon Duke into line but his father, the ultimate gangland tough, Tommy Shelby.
But who can bring Tommy back from his ghost-ridden…
Auteur: Eileen Jones
