During his decade on the BBC period drama Peaky Blinders, Cillian Murphy matured visibly as a man, and also as an actor. Steven Knight wrote such a challenging and nuanced role for him, as gangster Tommy Shelby, that it wasn’t surprising at all that, when the series concluded, Murphy was tapped to star as J. Robert Oppenheimer by Christopher Nolan.
It also wasn’t surprising, if you’d devoured all six seasons of Peaky Blinders, that Murphy would be not only willing, but eager, to revisit the character of Tommy in a movie-length sequel. Especially when the script is written by series creator Steven Knight, and brings the story to a dramatic conclusion.
The drama in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is provided by both personal and historical challenges. We last saw Tommy, in the final episode of Peaky Blinders, in the 1930s. Prohibition had been repealed in the U.S., the Nazi Party was rising in Germany, and Tommy’s volatile brother, Arthur, was about to die.
The movie jumps ahead to November 1940, when England already is at war with Germany. A munitions factory staffed by women in Birmingham, Tommy’s hometown, is bombed by aerial strikes from the Nazis, and claims more than 100 victims.
Tommy has long since secluded himself far away, isolated in a remote farmhouse, haunted by wartime memories and what he fears are family ghosts. But the bombing brings a visit from his sister Ada (Sophie Rundle). She informs him not only of the devastation to Birmingham, but the fact that his estranged son has taken control of his old gang, the Peaky Blinders, and is making new and dangerous moves and alliances.
