Brighton rock

To re-make a classic movie is likely to be a lose-lose proposition for a novice feature film director, yet BBC Films gave the go-ahead to Rowan Joffe for a 2009 adaptation of Brighton Rock. He'd won awards for his TV feature, The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall (2008) and co-writing of 28 Weeks Later, was working on the adaptation of Martin Booth's The American (an Anton Corbijn project starring George Clooney), and had good genes (mother, actress Jane Laportaire; Oscar-nominated father, director Roland Joffe).

The original B&W 1947 Ealing film, directed by the Boulting brothers, starred Richard Attenborough, reprising his breakthrough West End theatre role as Pinkie, a murderous young gangster who seduces a key witness. The plot was adapted by Graham Greene and playwright Terence Rattigan from Greene's 1938 novel about Roman Catholic consciences at work in a sordid gang-infested southern English resort town. Joffe shifted Greene's story to the end-1960s, incorporating the period's real street violence between Mods and rockers (and PC-ly changed a hoodlum into a role for a black actor).

Joffe's production included a stellar Brit cast. Pinkie was played by Sam Riley, a young TV actor who'd gained big-screen acclaim in the lead role for Control in 2007 (directed by Corbijn). Fast-rising Andrea Riseborough (Margaret Thatcher and The Devil's Whore on TV) self-effaced herself as Rose, the naive waitress who needs to be kept quiet. Backing them up with muted star cameos were Helen Mirren (teashop manager and Pinkie's nemesis), John Hurt (bookie client) and Andy Serkis (flashy rival gang-leader).

Greene's novella is a brief and brutal morality tale, and its success hinged on readers' images of the doomed youngsters and their rancid home town. In B&W, with Attenborough's little-boy-lost evil look, the movie was noir cinema at its Brit best. Joffe's richly-coloured TV film does capture a period feeling, but can't recreate the true look and mood of the 60s. Riley may have been mis-cast: he seems too mature to be a teenager, too suave, his features too chiselled, his face suggesting a heartless sneer provoked by an unpleasant smell.

Largely due to that unappealing focal anti-hero, Joffe's version looks to be a glossy charade, a re-make that serves best to prompt a re-viewing of the original. Did it sport a sly "miracle" to create the semi-happy ending Joffe presents? Did it dare to clarify, as Greene did, Catholic-raised Pinkie's psychopathic anti-sex anti-woman personality? Did the old-timers end up in cliched contentment? Was it less of a choir-ridden melodrama filled with picture-postcard shots of Brighton landmarks?