MovieChat Forums > Brighton Rock (2011) Discussion > Pinkie has no charm (some spoilers maybe...

Pinkie has no charm (some spoilers maybe)

posted 13 years ago by franfrank
12 replies | jump to latest

While Sam Riley was doing his best menacing psychopath, I found him utterly charmless.

That might sound like a strange thing to say, but I found myself wondering what on earth Rose saw in him, and for me that undermined the central premise of the film.

Why would she fall for this weird guy with no charisma who showed up at her work with a fresh scar on his face saying things like ''we got fings in common me and you''?

After he as-good-as threatened to throw acid in her face I think most girls would have run a mile wouldn't they? Or am I underestimating the dangerous bad boy appeal?

Anyway I guess what I'm saying is that because Pinkie is on screen for such a large portion of the film it would have been interesting for him to have another twist to his personality, a magnetism that underwrote his sociopathic madness because as it was I just found him dull and annoying.

What do you lot reckon?

[–] 13 years ago

[deleted]

[–] mikeyflatley 13 years ago

good lookin ppl need no charm

I live, I love, I slay, and I'm content

[–] 13 years ago

[deleted]

[–] 13 years ago

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[–] cdunbar-3 12 years ago

OP: I completely agree! Psychopaths and bad boys alike navigate through life relying on their charm...they would not survive long without it. In this film Pinkie had not an ounce. Of course that explains why his life came to a quick end... :)

[–] LfcMotd73 12 years ago

When I originally watched this remake I kind of thought the same.
Sam Riley is a strange one to me. I like the guy. He was excellent in Control but I thought I may have seen him miscast in 2 films now. A film called 13 he did with Jason Statham and Mickey Rourke and this, Brighton Rock.
I usually don't see actors as being miscast too much but I felt Riley was in these two films...at first!
But he's a very talented actor and his characterization does eventually draw you in. He does have range and quite a few facets he draws into his roles.
I thought he was too TOO stiff in Brighton Rock at first but if you watch the original Attenborough basically plays the character of Pinkie quite this way.

Pinkie is SUPPOSED to have no charm, He's a sociopath and unable to convey empathy or emotion.
It's not as startling and original as the classic Attenborough version but I do think it was well acted and had a great great cast.
Oh and the film 13, Riley does draw you in, once the plot develops I can see why he was ideal for the role. He was great and the stiff, miscasting I felt soon vanished.

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[–] cookiela2001 12 years ago

<< OP: I completely agree! Psychopaths and bad boys alike navigate through life relying on their charm...they would not survive long without it. In this film Pinkie had not an ounce. Of course that explains why his life came to a quick end... :) >>

I kind of agree, too.

But from Rosie's POV, since she's kind of a wallflower, maybe this is the most aggresively she's ever been pursued. It would have helped if the story set up early on that she was fascinated by crime or brutes or whatever, though, because it's not clear why she even accepts a first date from him.

[–] hodie 11 years ago

Rose has no idea of what it's liked to be loved. She seems used to ill-treatment. When they are sitting in the cafe and Pinkie starts viciously pinching her hand, she tells him that he can keep on doing that if he wants to, even though she's not enjoying it.

"Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?"

[–] f_friendly 11 years ago

Ahhhh, she didn't enjoy it, then.

I thought that was some form of demented British foreplay that Pinkie was hoping would arouse her.

Rose has no idea of what it's liked to be loved. She seems used to ill-treatment. When they are sitting in the cafe and Pinkie starts viciously pinching her hand, she tells him that he can keep on doing that if he wants to, even though she's not enjoying it.

[–] hodie 11 years ago

Pinkie was supposed to be charmless and unformed as a personality. Youth was pretty much all he had going for him. In that respect he reminded me of Rose. Both seemed to have something missing in their characters. I sort of liked Colleoni, though he was supposed to be a bad guy.

I know women who still like bad boys. I never did. I think Rose was just starved for human attention. Her family was awful and she was plain with nothing to look forward to in her life. She and PInkie were two lost souls.

Get me a bromide! And put some gin in it!

[–] ElliBAM 10 years ago

Thank god someone thinks the same as me. Why on earth after something weird happens with the bloke on the pier, the bloke being murdered would she marry a guy who turned up at her work with a cut up face demanding tea in the lunch area which he doesn't drink and who keeps a bottle of acid in his pocket. Is she on crack?

[–] MrEdnablackadder 10 years ago

Pinkie is supposed to be a brutal, unplesant animal. Rose is emotionally frail and weak-willed, so it's not like her attraction to him is that unbelievable: it's Beauty & The Beast. Pinkie being charmless is a given. What I would argue is that, in Riley's incarnation, he didn't have much charisma, something that Dickie Attenborough had in spades.