The Circus horse comes back...
You do not treat a thoroughbred like a circus horse, or use it to pull the wagon. Cilian Murphy should have declined, but like any good race horse, he was summoned to run, again, so he does. To run and to win – to cement his legend, against his objections. Actually, he was already immortal – in this unnecessary movie, alone, he feels spooky blind, not peaky blind – and you cannot revive a series while killing off the dynamic which made it successful. It was never just about Thomas Shelby, but about family, and this sequel seems to aim at cancelling the Shelbys, neglecting all the formula which made them powerful players and interesting – all in front, the women and the brother dynamic. Polly. Arthur. And now only the sister is left, and she is quickly degraded to be motivational fodder, a call. Nobody else is remaining, and no Gypsy queen and no illegitimate son who was still a kid in the series can really fill the void.
The whole psychological drama is hinged on a scene totally out of character. The entire series would make no sense when the difficult dynamic between brothers would include such a moment of rage, of losing it. It is exactly what would never happen, or…it should have happened a lot earlier. No writing will safe Thomas Shelby from such a moment „not being himself“ and that is what the writers knew…I guess. But they choose to focus on Thomas, the horse only, not on the team, who are reduced to be extras along the single man action path and as decoration for his torment. Writing? A Thomas Shelby does not need psychotherapy, he is an animal, who knows when not to look, when not to think. The grief feels real and good, but the auto-flagellation is not interesting, and his son actually an idiot. To cheap the well set up climax, too foreseeable, too good the aim, the sudden change of heart, the transformation from brilliant, ruthless strategist to sacrificial lamb. Too nice.
Better would have been: him getting pressured to kill his son, like god demanding it from Abraham. And he does it. But this does not make him immortal, it squeezes out the lemon: lemonade where there should be whiskey and straight American John Rambo, where there should be twists which are not based on esoteric scheming, but on a real myth. After all these seasons, fiction cannot be tepid about a patriarch who soared and prevailed, so his immortality is the foundational stone still standing, not a broken man. Vanishing, yes, but not openly failing. Women could take (parts) of that legacy, but not a son who is unworthy, in this case dangerously stupid. Sigh,…it is not a bad movie, but a letdown which maltreats the horse as cover for machine gun fire.
RIP Thomas Shelby, you should not have left the stables anymore, continue in our minds living, loving and running crazily in meadows and next to the canals of Birmingham, well hidden in the mist of shrouded mystery…