By Grant Terwilliger
Follow retired leader of the Peaky Blinders gang, Thomas Shelby, as he moves through smoky, atmospheric and explosive scenery facing his grief over his violent past and saving his son from a Nazi plot that could destroy England.
Just a disclaimer, I may not have watched the series before I watched this film, but I did see bits and pieces of the show as I walked by my living room.
Synopsis
“Peaky Blinders” is a TV series that started in Fall 2013 and ended in Spring 2022. The series takes place in Birmingham, England in post World War One and follows the main character Shelby, played by Cillian Murphy, and his crime gang the Peaky Blinders.
Released on March 6, 2026, “Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man” serves as a wrap up of the series in its entirety. The film takes place in 1940, four years after the date in the series finale. Development for the movie started in early 2021 with the film being directed by Tom Harper and written by Steven Knight.
The main characters in the film besides Shelby include Duke, played by Barry Keoghan, and the Chiriklo sisters, played by Rebecca Ferguson.
The plot consists of Nazis sneaking counterfeit bills into the English economy to end the war, and Shelby living a quiet life as a writer after his days of leading the Peaky Blinders years earlier. Shelby lives in an old secluded mansion with gravestones of his family in the courtyard unearthing and trying to cope with the loss of the majority of his family.
The film flicks between Shelby’s struggles and his son Duke running a new generation of the Peaky Blinders in Birmingham, England. Kaulo Chiriklo, the sister of Zelda Chiriklo to whom Shelby had a brief encounter with in the series, appears with a Romani kind of mysticism and supernatural abilities. She allows her dead sister Zelda to possess her and speak to Shelby’s dead brother. From this encounter Shelby travels to Birmingham to visit his son, who has entered a business proposition with the Nazis gone wrong, and deals with the repercussions slowly uncovering themselves.
What results is a tense father and son dynamic full of fighting not only with each other, but the fight to stop the Nazis from fulfilling their plan to drown England’s economy and influence in World War Two.
Thoughts on the film
Although the movie works as a final farewell to fans of the series, it also works as a stand-alone film. The only issue with watching it as a stand-alone film is that watching the rest of the series becomes useless.
The film starts off with a spark and gradually picks up and catches fire as the characters clash with grief and their desire to fix their present lives and build for a better future. It may follow the original hero’s journey that author Joseph Campbell first discovered, but it is so rich with emotion, intense war flashbacks, calm dream-like memories and surprises that make up for the basic plot line.
I found the influence of Romani culture and superstitious, almost spiritual themes that characters such as Chiriklo, Shelby and Duke possess to be fascinating. Before watching this film I had only heard of Romani culture in passing, but after watching this film I feel like doing a deep dive into Wikipedia.
With beautiful framing shots and often moody set design, this film is just about as close as you can get to feeling like you are in a different time and place. The main characters in the film have a lot of depth and emotion thanks to not only Murphy, but Keoghan and Ferguson.
I give this film four stars out of five for its ability to stand alone as a story and provide fantastic acting, and even more so, rich cinematography.
