Brighton Rock
IFC Films | Release Date: August 26, 2011 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
57
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 24 Critic Reviews
Positive:
10
Mixed:
13
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Boxoffice MagazinePam GradyAug 20, 2011
Control's Sam Riley steps into a role made unforgettable by a young Richard Attenborough in the 1947 original and makes it his own, slipping into the character like a second skin. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua RothkopfAug 24, 2011
What might have been a long walk off a short pier becomes a valid, vital rethinking of a crime classic. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonSep 10, 2011
Doesn't rise to classic status, but it's an intriguing mood piece. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia PuigSep 1, 2011
While the two leads emerge soulless as melodrama hovers around the edges of the tale, the era is convincingly portrayed and the melancholy mood is hauntingly rendered. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerAug 26, 2011
Joffe for the most part amps up the melodrama without tearing Greene's complex weave, but everything unravels toward the end with some staggeringly bad staging. It's as if the film itself had been mugged. Read full review
70
NPRBob MondelloAug 26, 2011
You can't accuse the new Brighton Rock of being untrue to the book - it actually reinstates the novel's climax, placing violent events back atop a cliff as Greene had originally, rather than on the Brighton Pier, as he had in his screenplay. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJohn AndersonAug 25, 2011
The film is almost distractingly beautiful to look at, something that accentuates the tension between the film's conflicting quantities, i.e., the glories of the physical world, and the corrupted humanity it hosts. Read full review
70
The New York TimesStephen HoldenAug 25, 2011
By discarding most of the theological debate, the movie is no longer a passion play but a gritty and despairing noir. That's good enough for me. Read full review
65
MovielineS.T. VanairsdaleAug 25, 2011
Where Joffe purposely departs from "Brighton Rock" deprives his movie of the book's most revelatory element: Faith. Gorgeous, ambitious and daring as it often is, Brighton Rock has no soul. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertAug 24, 2011
I know the novel, and as dark as this film is, I believe it hesitates to follow Greene into his dark abyss. It is about helplessness and evil, but isn't merciless enough. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierAug 26, 2011
Though he has a true appreciation for detail, Joffe has the scar-faced Pinkie so scurvy that Rose ought to run the minute she sees him. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubKeith PhippsAug 24, 2011
Rowan Joffe (son of Roland Joffe) provides busy, if never particularly distinctive direction, but it's the leads that continually threaten to sink the film. Read full review
50
SlateDana StevensAug 28, 2011
This Brighton Rock doesn't live up to the greatness of the novel (or even, really, the very-goodness of the 1947 movie), but it doesn't betray Greene's book either, which may be all a reasonable reader and filmgoer could ask. Read full review
50
New York PostKyle SmithAug 26, 2011
Graham Greene's guilt-and-gangsters tale "Brighton Rock" gets an even more melodramatic telling than in the 1947 film version courtesy of first-time director Rowan Joffe, whose histrionic adaptation screams "student film" with practically every frame. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleAmy BiancolliAug 25, 2011
Richard Attenborough nailed that purity 64 years ago, and Sam Riley nails it now. His Pinkie is a slim, mesmerizing package of immaculate and undiluted evil, clear as a stick of Brighton Rock candy. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn HornadayAug 25, 2011
There's a lovely moment with Mirren and John Hurt that helps send Brighton Rock toward its final note of tenderness. With so much style to burn, Joffe handles the tinge of Greene-ian ambivalence just right. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeMark FeeneyAug 25, 2011
Joffe's biggest mistake isn't visual, it's chronological. What makes Pinkie so terrifying in the novel is that he's just 17. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJ.R. JonesAug 25, 2011
Joffe, a British screenwriter (The American, 28 Weeks Later) debuting as director, hits some of these notes in his adaptation of Brighton Rock, but the movie's religious flourishes seem more rhetorical than heartfelt. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsAug 25, 2011
Although Joffe appears to be making a Brighton version of the seductively natty evil we find stateside in "Boardwalk Empire," this Brighton Rock remains muffled, half-formed pulp fiction. Read full review
50
The New YorkerDavid DenbyAug 23, 2011
The extreme innocence of Rose (Andrea Riseborough), the young girl whom Pinkie seduces in order to keep her quiet, is no longer very convincing, or even interesting. Read full review
50
Village VoiceKarina LongworthAug 23, 2011
The leads are compelling and the chase and fight scenes - scored to a propulsive bass-drum beat - are kinetic, but as Brighton Rock attempts to zero in on Rose and Pinkie's dangerous relationship, it loses momentum. Read full review
50
VarietyJustin ChangAug 20, 2011
Joffe's first feature never shakes off the feel of a telepic with above-average production values, and its unsteady lead performances and often garish stylistic touches make a muddle of the source material's psychological acuity. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterRay BennettAug 20, 2011
Rowan Joffe's film of Graham Greene's 1938 novel "Brighton Rock" takes a gothic approach to the story of a young thug obsessed with hell with little of the writer's subtlety and too much reliance on a loud quasi-religious choral score. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineBill WeberAug 22, 2011
Brighton Rock never brings its baby-faced hood antihero, the scarfaced Pinkie Brown (Sam Riley, pouting and hunched in the late-DiCaprio manner), into a semblance of human plausibility. Read full review
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