quote:

Originally posted by Ronin1069:
Will you at least say if it was worth the watch?

quote:

Originally posted by fischtown7:
The beginning alone made me shake my head, massive air attack and everyone is going to work and still at their workstations like it's nothing but a thunder storm.

quote:

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man opens with a bang. A female factory worker arrives for her night shift at the small arms factory where she works in wartime Birmingham. It’s her birthday, and her colleagues – a few dozen of them – have got her a cake. Just as they sing happy birthday, and she blows out the candle, a Nazi bomb lands, blowing the building and killing them all.

This, it’ll come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Steven Knight’s work, was inspired by true events.

“I wanted to use the bombing of the BSA factory at the beginning because it’s a real event in 1940,” Knight told a press conference ahead of the film’s release on Netflix. “People who were on the shift were given the chance to go to the shelters and they said no. They carried on work and they were all killed. My mum worked at the BSA (Birmingham Small Arms) factory at the time, putting explosives into artillery shells.”

He added: “She wasn’t there that night. But others were. It does absolutely show that at any moment at that time, a bomb could drop on you. For no reason. Not because you were good or bad but because you happened to be in the wrong place.”

Birmingham had been one of Britain’s primary gun manufacturing hubs for centuries – hence the “Gun Quarter” near the city centre. By the outbreak of the Second World War, the BSA Guns Ltd at Small Heath (Peaky Blinders’ turf, of course) was making thousands of guns a week. They were making shells and other ordnance as well.

The Nazis knew this and, during the night of 19 November 1940, launched a series of air raids meant to obliterate the Birmingham war effort, and with it the Brummie spirit. Across nine hours, bombers dropped about 400 tonnes of explosives on factories across the city.

Among the Luftwaffe’s targets was the BSA factory at Small Heath.

At around 7.15pm, as workers – many of them women – arrived to begin the night shift, the sirens went off. Some went straight for the shelters, others – they knew how important to the war effort their job was – chose to stay at their station.

Then the bombs hit, collapsing the entire “New Building” which housed many of the Browning gun-making machines. Floors and walls collapsed, bringing machines down on top of each other. Then the fires started.

In total, 53 BSA workers aged between 18 and 68 were killed, of whom ten were women. Eighty-nine people were injured, 30 seriously.

The fires were eventually stifled, and the rubble of the "New Building" was cleared, but the silence that followed was the heaviest part. In the cold light of the following morning, Small Heath had become a graveyard of ordinary bravery. It took three months for gun-making operations to resume.

For Steven Knight, this tribute to the "Peaky" heartland reflects something poignant about his hometown – while the Shelbys fought their wars with razor blades and ambition, up the street, the real people of Small Heath fought theirs by simply refusing to leave their posts.

quote:

Originally posted by BigSwede:
Worth a watch but not memorable at all

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
It's worth a watch if you've seen the series.

But if you haven't seen the series you'll likely be lost and bored. And it will lack basically all of its emotional weight, which is really the only thing that saves the film from being a disappointment.

Overall, I'd say that it ranks as a slightly below-average Peaky Blinders episode. Not nearly as good as the best PB episodes/story arcs, but still decent, if you can overlook some of the sloppy writing and nonsensical character decisions and instead focus on the emotions involved and on Murphy's acting.

It's at least a fairly fitting end to this storyline. (And likely a segue into the sequel series that's currently in development.)

I will say that I'm not really a fan of Duke in the film. His motivations are muddy, his character arc abrupt and lacking foundation, and he doesn't seem to have earned what he gets in the end.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:

quote:

Originally posted by fischtown7:
The beginning alone made me shake my head, massive air attack and everyone is going to work and still at their workstations like it's nothing but a thunder storm.

That was a real life event, as mentioned in a closing dedication slide just before the end credits.

quote:

That was a real life event, as mentioned in a closing dedication slide just before the end credits.