The first time we see Cillian Murphy’s troubled Thomas “Tommy” Shelby in “Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man,” the engaging enough Netflix film that expands on the beloved original BBC series, he’s walking alone towards the camera.
It’s a likely thing for him to be doing as the character increasingly retreated into himself over the course of the show, and cut himself off from his family in the series finale. Only in this film, picking up years after we last saw Tommy and with the horrors of World War II now serving as its backdrop, the man has become far more like the ghosts that continue to haunt him than he is the cruel crime boss turned self-serving politician we once knew.
Luckily for us and “The Immortal Man,” Tommy has changed considerably but Murphy remains as captivating as ever. It’s his performance that burns bright, even as all else in this hit-and-miss film is at risk of either flaming out or, worse, falling into murky darkness. He slips back into the character’s spiffy shoes and cap with ease just as he instills him with a greater sense of sadness. Considering how much he’d lost before now, this is no easy feat. And yet, as this film shows, there is much more for Tommy to lose. Though many of these losses feel like rushed ways of writing out characters that either didn’t return or that the show had already pushed to the side long ago, they still manage to cut deep.
Much of this is due to Murphy giving each of these losses greater impact as his normally stoic visage begins to crumble. This proves especially true in regards to a surprising, almost anticlimactic, yet still devastating loss that Tommy is directly responsible for. You can feel the weight he carries with him in every step, just as you see a more sinister darkness behind his eyes. Tommy is a man Murphy makes us fully believe is capable of immense brutality who, at the same time, is desperately trying to hold to his better nature that is continually slipping through his fingers. There are still times when “The Immortal Man” can feel stiff and lifeless in how it holds on to this, with some painfully clunky exposition nearly taking you out of the whole thing.
But Murphy brings all the necessary life in his performance to ensure it holds together. Just as the already broken world around Tommy is falling apart, the actor carves out moments of grim grace in the rubble of his life.
Some of this is classic “Peaky Blinders,” with the story drawing loosely from real history, including the perpetually looming dangers of fascism. In this case, the film has greater stakes that surround Operation Bernhard, a Nazi Germany scheme to flood the UK with counterfeit banknotes in the hope of turning the tide of the war. The plot brings Tommy back from the remote home where he’s hidden away to Birmingham as his son Duke, played by a refreshingly understated Barry Keoghan, is coming perilously close to not just repeating the sins of his father, but bringing about even greater destruction.
At the same time, Tommy has been both forgotten by many, resulting in a darkly comedic scene in his old bar, and held up as an almost mythic figure by others when he marches back in on horseback in a bittersweet, well-staged return scene. While both of these teeter on fan service, it also raises more complicated questions of legacy and memory. Even as the film itself is closer to something like “El Camino,” the sequel to “Breaking Bad,” in how it feels less like a standalone experience than it does an extended epilogue, scenes like these ensure you’re still along for the ride. With all that Tommy supposedly achieved and the immense harm he caused to others, something he’s attempting to reckon with in a book he’s writing, there’s something profoundly sad to seeing it all reflected back on him in Murphy’s piercing gaze.
While these competing answers to how Tommy will be remembered, if at all, are not explored in as much depth as you’d hope for in the film, it still gives the experience a more thematically complex and tragic dimension. We see his son attempting to follow in the patriarch’s footsteps, with Keoghan giving Duke the necessary layers to be both a frightening figure and also a scared kid. One well-staged scene, set to Grian Chatten’s haunting “Puppet,” proves crushing in how it all comes together as young Duke is brought face to face with what the steep cost of this life.
When father and son reunite, their confrontation is awkward and halting, with the way they each wrestle in the mud providing another instance of dark comedy, just as it serves as a fitting thesis statement for the film. Neither are afraid of rolling around in the muck, though the end of this won’t be triumph but tragedy.
The film eventually becomes more of a slapdash revenge heist of sorts, but there is still enough substance to keep you engaged through the rough patches. Much like the show, it’s often more than a little scattered and borderline silly, but the performances elevate the material. Whether it is the newcomers, such as Rebecca Ferguson and Tim Roth —who each prove to be welcome additions in their own ways — or the familiar faces, everyone is solid in their parts. But more than anything, this is Murphy’s show once more and he doesn’t waste the opportunity. He has much that he has to carry on his shoulders, including in one harrowing and effectively claustrophobic scene where Tommy very nearly gets buried underground, though he does so with ease. For every moment you feel the film straining to keep moving forward, Murphy never misses a step.
In the end, the line that kept feeling most pertinent to “The Immortal Man” was the one Tommy was told by Arthur in the series, which is that “you have to move around or it all catches up with you.” The pain, the loss, and the horrors of war both past and present, are bearing down on the characters. Whenever the film stops to slow down and confront this, with Murphy holding the camera with captivating intensity, it grabs hold of you. In others more action-heavy moments, it can start to stumble, but the fantastic final sequence makes you forget all the missteps that it took to get there.
While neither Tommy nor the film itself was ever likely to be immortal, the closing frames prove to be a fitting sendoff for him as well as his long, sad saga. For what could very well be the last time, he and Murphy burn bright.
“Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man” opens in theaters Friday and will be available to stream March 20 on Netflix.