Brighton Rock

Directed by Rowan Joffe. Starring Sam Riley, Andrea Riseborough, Andy Serkis, Helen Mirren, John Hurt, Maurice Roëves, Nonso Anozie 16 cert, lim release, 110 min

THERE’S NOTHING more tedious than the critic who, reporting on the film version of a much-loved book, spends his or her time detailing the alterations made to the supposedly sacred text. Nonetheless, it is reasonable to point out recalibrations that appear to weaken the story’s potential.

Where to begin with this peculiar, occasionally diverting but ultimately frustrating adaptation of Graham Greene’s creepiest book? Previously rendered in a superb 1947 film, the 1938 novel has been needlessly updated to the early 1960s. Pinkie Brown, a small-time hoodlum, riddled by the most unforgiving class of Catholicism,

is attempting to carry out his nefarious business while mods and rockers exchange blows on the Brighton seafront.

As part of an attempt to shift the balance of underground power, Pinkie is involved in the murder of a rival. Rose, a timid young waitress, sees more than she should. Realising that she too is a “Roman”, Pinkie begins taking her out and, aware that a woman cannot give evidence against her husband, elects to put a ring on her frail finger.

The atmosphere of Brighton Rockcannot be faulted. Shooting in water-stained browns and mouldy greys, cinematographer John Mathieson, a frequent collaborator with Ridley Scott, nicely conjures up a provincial Britain that has not quite woken up to the 1960s. Sam Reilly (so good in Control) is a little underpowered as Pinkie, but Andrea Riseborough is touching as Rose and Andy Serkis owns the screen as a crime kingpin.

Sadly, much of the story's original power has been lost through a few puzzling alterations. The total pointlessness of the shift in period, allowing gratuitous allusions to Quadrophenia, can be dismissed as a harmless indulgence. The decision, however, to turn Pinkie's nemesis, once an apparently unthreatening, overweight chuckler, into the perennially terrifying Helen Mirren robs the character of any nuance.

More troublingly, the complexities of Pinkie’s deranged conscience – the most religious character is also the most evil – appear to have totally flummoxed the screenwriters. He just seems mad and, as his outrages escalate, the film becomes ever more overheated. A lost opportunity.