It appears that this film divides as people seem to hate it because it's a remake or you just love it like me who had never seen the original film before. I thought that this film is a return to the old ways of making films with style and good score. It's got that classical style in it and it appears that the makers have really put an effort in studying the old films. The music is used like they did in the old "gialli" films. That's just a perfect way to get me hooked completely even if the film wasn't that good. This movie is better than good and i can recommend it to those who prefer slower pace in films and perfect acting and good script.

Evidently in order to simplify the plot, this version of BRIGHTON ROCK starts off on the wrong foot and never regains its balance. The start of the book (and of the 1947 movie) shows us the murder of an innocent man. An impecunious, promiscuous middle-aged woman with an innate sense of justice refuses to let the murder go unsolved. In this new movie, the murder victim is a violent thug and the middle-aged woman is a friend of his, so the pure and disinterested quest for justice is muddied up by the woman's personal motivation and the victim's own culpability. Moreover, she isn't wanting for money, so her quest for justice, while still dangerous, is less quixotic.There is also a problem with the young gang leader and his girlfriend. The book contains certain extremes of characterization that the movie might indeed be excused for avoiding, especially in the 21st century. The gang leader is supposed to be in his mid-teens, while his gang members are adults, and if that were on the screen before your eyes it would be harder to believe than in a book. Still, although both movies used actors out of their teens, this time the fellow scarcely looks boyish; he's balding deep at the temples. And his girlfriend in the movie makes less of an effort than in the book to turn her attention away from his evildoing. It's understandable that a movie in 2010 would not want her portrayed as hiding her head in the sand; but by reducing her naiveté, as in taking away the innocence of that murder victim at the beginning, the movie becomes more a tale about those other people, the criminals who are unlike you and me, and less a story where we can find people to identify with.

Riley may be, elsewhere, a good actor, but here he's too old, too exaggeratedly creepy and sinister. It's a sour one-note performance, unrelieved by moments of humanity that might have made him, in other hands, a little bit endearing. His Pinkie spends virtually the entire film glowering menacingly at everyone, including Rose. He even glowers when he's staring into space.Richard Attenborough, in the much more satisfying 1947 version, was of course menacing as well -- Pinkie is, after all, a killer -- but at least Attenborough was much smaller physically, as well as younger and more open-faced, and displayed an occasional touch of boyish vulnerability that made Rose's falling for him fairly believable. In this bleakly charmless remake, Riley stalks through the city like a character in an Edward Gor ey cartoon, looking so grim, so downright homicidal and malevolent, that anyone of any sense would cross the street to avoid him. And he speaks in such a hoarse, croaking snarl that when he informs Rose he was once a choirboy, you feel like laughing.Which makes it all the more improbable that Rose would fall in love with him so quickly; the fact that she does so makes her seem -- in contrast to the touching, naive Rose of the 1947 version -- almost pathological and, frankly, retarded. She reminded me of the serial killer's mentally challenged girlfriend, played by Juliette Lewis, in "Kalifornia." And that Rose would actually brandish a knife at Helen Mirren's Ida and speak to her with such hostility, and that Ida would nonetheless repeatedly risk her own life on Rose's behalf... well, it all seems pretty unlikely.Also unlikely: John Hurt as the frail and elderly Corkery, talking back to Pinkie and his thug sidekick when they come for their protection money, getting -- not surprisingly -- slashed and threatened for his attitude, and yet later speaking dismissively and indeed jocularly about the young man. Pinkie is an obvious psychopath, a known killer, and makes no attempt to hide it -- in fact, he all but advertises it, it's the role he wants to play -- yet the law-abiding characters, while they disapprove of him, seem to regard him without a trace of fear.The Philip Davis character, Spicer, also seems weirdly, improbably oblivious to the danger, which is why, predictably, he winds up dead. Spicer's supposed to be a lifelong career criminal, yet he acts like a dim-witted and trusting comic-book victim who all but colludes in his own death, even returning to the gang's flat despite the fact that, hours earlier, Pinkie has rather obviously set him up and tried to have him murdered. I just don't get it.In a series of interviews on the DVD, various cast members and the writer/director spoke of their hope, indeed their fond belief, that Graham Greene would have liked this new version of his novel. I can't agree; I think it's just as well Greene was spared having to watch it.

I am so pleased I did not go to see this film. I would much rather have watched the original black and white version again and would recommend anybody else to do the same. Every part in this new version was acted better in the original. Hermione Gingold any day over Helen Mirren. The sound quality is very poor. Most people seemed to mumble their way through and clearly the director was not concerned in the least. The only bright spot of the film was the performance of Phil Davis' as Spicer. Though to anyone with knowledge of the book and the original film version the parts of Dallow and Spicer have clearly been switched. It is an intentional and convoluted switch for "politically correct" reasons which leaves the character of Dallow (played by Nonzo Anosie), central to the book and the original film, still in place for the final sequence despite Anozie's inability to carry the significant part of Dallow; hence the switch and Davis' part of Spicer being enhanced to cover it. Sam Riley tried his best, no doubt, as Pinky but frankly he wasn't a patch on Richard Attenborough's performance.