{"id":459315,"date":"2026-03-05T18:23:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T18:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/459315\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T18:23:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T18:23:10","slug":"peaky-blinders-the-immortal-man-review-a-fine-time-but-this-netflix-movie-sequel-doesnt-justify-its-existence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/459315\/","title":{"rendered":"Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man review \u2013 A fine time, but this Netflix movie sequel doesn\u2019t justify its existence"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I will concede this to the flat-capped and pocket-watched fleet of Peaky Blinders zealots: there is something mightily compelling about watching Cillian Murphy\u2019s Tommy Shelby stride in slow motion through fog, suited and pistol bared<\/a>, as Fontaines DC\u2019s Grian Chatten growls so loudly it threatens to shake the speakers off their perch.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s a character so embedded in British pop culture<\/a> that in The Immortal Man, his feature-length swan song, when he encounters a soldier at a bar who spits out derisively, \u201cwho the f*** is Thomas Shelby?\u201d, the whole cinema audience responded by hooting with laughter. Tommy responds by shoving a grenade down the man\u2019s shirt.<\/p>\n

The Immortal Man exists purely to spin out that mythology one more time, with Murphy having formally retired the role ahead of a new prequel series. Clearly, it\u2019s intended as a bridge between the two shows, though what it actually contributes in terms of thematic or narrative development is negligible. Season six already did the necessary work<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Cillian<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Cillian Murphy in \u2018Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man\u2019 (Netflix)<\/p>\n

That said, Steven Knight\u2019s small screen empire<\/a> (from Peaky Blinders and Taboo to A Thousand Blows and House of Guinness) is united by a common vision: you can sloppily chip away at history all you like, but if it\u2019s bombastic enough in its delivery, then it\u2019s all the easier to surrender to its pleasures. And, when a Knight project is at its most enjoyable, it\u2019s usually because he\u2019s placed someone at its centre as formidably talented as Murphy.<\/p>\n

Tommy Shelby is one of the actor\u2019s cornerstone performances, because he can level all that early 20th-century Brummie crime boss braggadocio with the soul of an innate philosopher. In Murphy\u2019s hands, it\u2019s never mere macho stoicism \u2013 we fully understand Tommy as a man buckled by accumulated loss and violence. And he\u2019s as good as ever in The Immortal Man, though he\u2019s found a true successor in Barry Keoghan, taking over from Conrad Khan as Tommy\u2019s illegitimate son, Erasmus \u201cDuke\u201d Shelby.<\/p>\n

Keoghan\u2019s swagger is more mischievous in nature, but he shares with Murphy the same ability to poke holes in his own charisma so we can glimpse the vulnerability behind it. He\u2019s a natural fit for Peaky Blinders. In fact, it\u2019s a little too natural \u2013 Duke\u2019s a cookie-cutter Keoghan role<\/a>, the rogue element who ends up humbled with his face down in the mud (literally this time).<\/p>\n

Duke, in Tommy\u2019s noted absence, is now in charge of the Peaky Blinders. The year is 1940. But as Tommy\u2019s sister Ada (Sophie Rundle) warns, he\u2019s running the gang like it\u2019s \u201c1919 again\u201d. He was abandoned by his father (twice), so deems any form of allegiance as futile. He\u2019ll happily steal munitions from the army and conspire with a fascist (Tim Roth\u2019s Beckett) to help flood the British economy with forged notes, and potentially win the war for the Nazis, as long as he gets a decent pay cut.<\/p>\n

\"Barry<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Barry Keoghan in \u2018Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man\u2019 (Netflix)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s not much meat on the bones of Duke\u2019s character there, and neither is there on Rebecca Ferguson\u2019s mysterious Romany woman Kaulo, who crashes Tommy\u2019s self-imposed exile out in a countryside mansion. He\u2019s been busy chatting up ghosts of his dead loved ones, pausing occasionally to write a few more chapters of his autobiography and solemnly wear a turtleneck.<\/p>\n

But Kaulo has her own connection to the other side (the film, as the series did before it, plays fast, loose, and carelessly with Romany culture) and she brings a message that will have Tommy slap back on the suit and the flat cap to ride out for a final mission. In slow motion. Through fog. While guitars scream in back (new music includes a slowed-down version of Nick Cave\u2019s \u201cRed Right Hand\u201d, contributions by Amy Taylor from Amyl and the Sniffers, and two Massive Attack covers). What\u2019s worked before works here just as well. Tommy Shelby persists.<\/p>\n

Dir: Tom Harper. Starring: Cillian Murphy, Rebecca Ferguson, Tim Roth, Sophie Rundle, Barry Keoghan, Stephen Graham. Cert 15, 112 minutes<\/p>\n

\u2018Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man\u2019 is in cinemas from 6 March, and streams on Netflix from 20 March<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-459315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}