"Attenborough, silent, calculating, pale, and unblinking, offers one of the cinema's most convincing embodiments of paranoia and violence. One of the strongest Graham Greene adaptations!"
– David Denby, The New Yorker. Click here to read full review

"A REDISCOVERED CLASSIC! A NOIR MASTERPIECE!"
– Stephen Whitty, The Newark Star-Ledger. Click here to read full review

"TERRIFIC! Greene's movie-friendliness is in full cry. Brighton Rock shows, as clearly as anything ever did, his preoccupation with the allure of sin... virtue is by and large uninteresting, and moral weakness, grubby and persistent, is the main attraction, irresistible as the tawdry pleasures of an English seaside resort."
– Terrence Rafferty, The New York Times . Click here to read full review

"EDITORS' PICK! The exquisitely rendered atmosphere of desolation
in this moody 1947 classic hasn't dated one bit."
– New York magazine

"A seedy Noir, equal parts concealed-camera atmosphere and tense set pieces. More Dickensian than usual for Greene, there's colorful, larger-than-life supporting players aplenty, and strong location shooting."
– Vadim Rizov, Village Voice. Click here to read full review

"SUPERB! Although the movie depicts Brighton’s masses at play in the sun,
its true world is that of Film Noir—of shadowy staircases,
of a rain-swept pier at night, of a racetrack where thugs cut Pinky’s face
and try to kill a harmless old member of his crew."
– Graham Fuller, Artforum. Click here to read full review

"Wracked with religious guilt and anxieties of inadequacy (both sexual and political) on a Napoleonic level, Attenborough makes a perfect Noir protagonist. He combines the boyish good looks of Farley Granger and the psychopathic placidity of Richard Widmark. In true Noir fashion, there are no heroes — only those who have been tainted by the darkness. Harry Waxman's expert black-and-white cinematography imbues even the sunniest outdoor locations with claustrophobic paranoia."
– Cullen Gallagher, L Magazine. Click here to read full review

(1947) On a sunny Whitsun bank holiday at the slightly tacky seaside resort of Brighton (the title refers to a local hard candy), people are dancing to the bands on the pier, and the shooting galleries, souvenir stands, and tea rooms are packed with day-trippers. But “Kolly Kibber,” busy caching newspaper giveaway cards around town, keeps looking over his shoulder for Richard Attenborough’s mystical psycho “Pinkie,” razor-wielding teenage head of a racecourse gang (“one of the most vicious pieces of work to ever slink across a cinema screen” – Total Film), so ruthless that he’d actually (yecch!) marry naïve, underage waitress Carol Marsh just to tie up a crime’s loose end. But blowsy blonde Hermione Baddeley keeps asking all these questions. The Boulting Brothers’ (John alternated with identical twin Roy as director and producer) adaptation of Graham Greene’s serious thriller was scripted by the author himself, after he was dissatisfied with Terence Rattigan’s first, happily-ended draft. Breakthrough starring screen role for future Oscar-winning director (Gandhi) Attenborough, who had played the same role on stage four years earlier (see also: 10 Rillington Place) — plus dazzling location shooting, with crowds of seemingly unseeing holiday-goers in the background of chase scenes across major intersections; but also with the blackest of Noir treatments for this darkest of British Noirs. Approx. 86 minutes.
1:00, 4:40, 8:20
A RIALTO PICTURES RELEASE

"Attenborough strikingly conveys the rotten core of fresh-faced teenage gangster, whose intense stare goes on for miles...
his sinister stylings are what linger, done as if damnation were the most casual of enterprises."
– Keith Uhlich, Time Out New York

“The best [film to capture] on celluloid [Greene’s] seedy world of evil, sin and betrayal.
The casting is impeccable — the most authentic criminal band ever assembled in a British movie.”
– Philip French, The Observer

“Pinky is one of the most vicious pieces of work to ever slink across a cinema screen.
Drawing on American film noir for its look and the Warner gangster movies of the '30s for its lead character, the rise and fall of this seaside hoodlum
was a razor slash across the face of British Cinema. Moody, disturbing, realistic, nasty, exhilarating... pick your adjective, Brighton Rock is all of them.”
– Total Film

“Attenborough puts in his most memorable performance (with the possible exception of his Christie in 10 Rillington Place). Beautifully shot by Harry Waxman,
it's perhaps the nearest thing to a British Noir thriller, and as David Thomson has written, has the authentic 'tang of fish and chips'.”
– Geoff Andrew, Time Out (London)

“The grim realism and sordid subject matter of the film is striking, handled by the Boultings, who use mood and dark,
stark photography to convey an almost palpable sense of dread. This is as tough a noir as any produced at the same time in Hollywood.
| Attenborough is brilliantly creepy as the young punk, a kind of British James Cagney with his own brand of swagger.”
– All Movie Guide