Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man: Review — Is It Worth Watching? | 7.4/10

Articolo aggiornato il 16/08/2026

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man delivers exactly what the faithful deserve: a taut, visceral reckoning that proves Tommy Shelby still has teeth, even in exile. It’s not the masterpiece some hoped for, but it’s a bloody good farewell that respects the legacy while pushing into darker, more desperate territory.

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man: The plot (no spoilers)

Tommy Shelby’s been running — hiding in the margins, trying to bury the man he was beneath bourbon and silence. But when his estranged son gets tangled up in Nazi conspirators, the old gangster has no choice but to crawl back to Birmingham like a ghost returning to haunt his own grave. Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is about the impossible debt every patriarch pays when the world refuses to let him disappear.

The film strips away the Shelby glamour and forces you into a claustrophobic space where former power means nothing and new enemies smell blood in the water. Harper orchestrates this as a slow-burn siege rather than a heist spectacle — expect tension over spectacle, paranoia over plot convenience. The Birmingham setting becomes a suffocating maze where everyone wants a piece of Tommy’s ghost, and he’s running out of bullets and bargaining chips.

Acting & direction

Cillian Murphy is absolutely lethal here — his Tommy Shelby has aged into something harder and emptier, a man performing vitality without actually feeling it anymore. Barry Keoghan as the son is electric and dangerous, playing the role as pure ideological fervor rather than typical filial rebellion. Rebecca Ferguson brings a steely intelligence to what could’ve been a one-note love interest, and Tim Roth‘s Nazi antagonist is genuinely unsettling without ever needing to raise his voice.

Tom Harper shoots the film like a noir fever dream with muted colors and jagged editing that mirrors Tommy’s deteriorating grip on reality. The score is sparse and menacing — long stretches of near-silence punctuated by discordant strings. Pacing works against comfort; scenes linger until they sting, and the 112 minutes feels longer in the best way, like watching a man slowly realize his sins have come to collect compound interest.

The strengths

• Murphy’s performance is a masterclass in exhaustion — he communicates entire emotional arcs through eye movement and the way he holds a cigarette, making Tommy’s attempted retirement feel genuinely tragic rather than just plot convenience.
• The film refuses to soften its central premise: some men don’t get to disappear, no matter how badly they want to, and the story earns every ounce of that bleak philosophy.
• Harper’s direction of the action sequences is restrained and brutal, favoring close-quarters violence over cinematic spectacle, which makes every moment feel consequential and dangerous.
• The exploration of father-son conflict avoids cliché by making the son ideologically committed to causes Tommy can’t manipulate his way around — it’s a battle of worldviews, not just egos.

The weaknesses

• At 112 minutes, the film occasionally sags under its own bleakness — there are stretches where the slow-burn approach feels more like slow-torture, and your patience gets tested harder than the narrative demands.
• Some supporting characters feel underdeveloped, particularly Stephen Graham’s role, which deserves more screen time than the story allocates, turning what could’ve been a compelling reunion into a brief ghost appearance.
• The Nazi subplot, while thematically relevant, sometimes feels grafted onto a story that’s fundamentally more interested in personal decay than historical stakes, creating tonal friction.

Who should watch it

You need to see this if you worshipped the crime drama of the series and want closure that actually hurts instead of feels safe. It’s for psychological thriller devotees who appreciate slow-motion character destruction and don’t need everything explained or redeemed. Fans of dark character studies like There Will Be Blood or the later seasons of The Sopranos will recognize Harper’s commitment to letting his protagonist drown in real time without supernatural intervention or divine mercy.

Final verdict

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is a worthy swan song that understands Tommy Shelby better than nostalgia would allow — it refuses the easy path of redemption or final victory, instead choosing to examine what happens when a man built entirely on manipulation meets forces he can’t talk his way through. The 7.2 rating is fair because it’s not flawless, but the imperfections feel intentional, part of the film’s commitment to discomfort over entertainment. If you want a crowd-pleasing victory lap, this isn’t it; if you want to watch a brilliant actor inhabit the end of something brilliant, clear your evening and prepare to feel genuinely haunted.