50
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.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
38
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.
50
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.
50
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.
80
What might have been a long walk off a short pier becomes a valid, vital rethinking of a crime classic.
50
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.
58
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.
100
Boxoffice Magazine by Pam Grady
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.
50
The Hollywood Reporter by Ray Bennett
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.
63
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
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.