“In the 13 years since it first slo-mo strutted onto our TV screens, ‘Peaky Blinders’ has become a cultural phenomenon,” said Dan Jolin in Empire. Now, we have a spin-off film set in the thick of the Second World War, half a decade on from where the sixth and final series left off.
Cillian Murphy reprises his role as the gangster “King of the Gypsies”, Tommy Shelby, now world-weary and “wearing cardies” as he writes his memoir in a decaying rural manor house. But then a mysterious Romany woman (Rebecca Ferguson) turns up, and persuades him to return to Birmingham, in order to bring his violent illegitimate son (Barry Keoghan) – who now runs his Peaky Blinders mob – to heel.
It’s good to see Tommy “back in his newsboy cap and three-piece suit”, “stalking the streets” and laying down the law – “or rather its opposite”. Still, the film does have the feel of an “extra-long” “Peaky Blinders” episode rather than a “standalone cinematic experience”.
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Meanwhile, as his character ponders the “perennial question” of all long-running TV characters – “Why does everyone around me have to die?” – Murphy alternates between two modes: “haunted and glowering”.