Tommy Shelby has spent six years in purgatory when we catch up with him in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, and honestly? He looks terrible. Cillian Murphy’s antihero is living alone in a tumbledown mansion, smoking opium, writing his memoirs, and generally being the most depressing retired gangster in Birmingham. The year is 1940, World War II is raging, and Tommy has declared his own internal war more pressing than Hitler’s. “I have a war of my own inside my head,” he tells his sister Ada, which is either profound or just what you say when you don’t want to deal with actual Nazis.
The film, directed by Tom Harper with Steven Knight returning as writer, understands that Peaky Blinders fans don’t want to see Tommy happy. They want to see him suffering beautifully, making impossible choices, and wearing impossible suits. The Immortal Man delivers all of this while adding a new complication: Tommy’s illegitimate son Duke, played by Barry Keoghan with the kind of unhinged energy that makes you nervous whenever he’s on screen.
Duke has reformed the Peaky Blinders gang in his father’s absence, behaving like “it’s 1919 all over again”—a reference to the show’s postwar roots that will make longtime fans nod approvingly. He’s more ruthless than Tommy ever was, which is saying something for a man who once solved problems with razor blades and whiskey. Ada, now an MP because of course she is, warns Tommy that Duke will end up “hung by the law or lynched by the people.” Tommy’s response is to keep typing, because apparently his memoir is more important than preventing his son’s imminent death.
Enter Tim Roth as Beckett, Treasurer of the British Union of Fascists, who recruits Duke for a scheme involving £350 million in fake bank notes and high treason. The plan will tank the British economy and hand the country to the Nazis, but Duke gets a 20% cut so he’s listening. The catch: he has to kill his aunt Ada first. This is the kind of family drama that makes the Shelbys seem almost functional by comparison.
Rebecca Ferguson plays Kaulo, a Romany woman with psychic powers who finally convinces Tommy to leave his opium den and rejoin society. She’s the twin sister of Duke’s late mother, which means she’s connected to this mess by blood and prophecy. Her presence brings the supernatural elements that always lurked at the edges of the series front and center—Peaky Blinders was never just historical drama, and The Immortal Man embraces its Gothic roots.
The film works as both continuation and entry point. Newcomers won’t be overwhelmed by backstory; the essential information is woven naturally into the narrative. Returning characters like Ada and the ghost of Arthur (dead by apparent suicide, haunting Tommy’s conscience) serve the new story rather than simply fan-servicing old fans. The screenplay takes the show’s key themes—family, trust, betrayal—to their logical conclusion in a father-son story with Oedipal undertones that would make Freud reach for his notebook.
Murphy, now an Oscar winner for Oppenheimer, brings unexpected emotional depth to Tommy after 13 years and 36 episodes. The memoir framing device is slightly ridiculous—Tommy typing on a canal barge while being shot at is peak Peaky Blinders absurdity—but it allows Murphy to voice the character’s interiority in ways the series rarely could. His reunion with Duke, preceded by a brawl in pig shit that ruins his tailoring, is exquisite. The cap still fits, and Murphy wears it with the weight of a man who has destroyed worlds and regrets most of them.
The wartime setting adds visual richness without overwhelming the personal story. Harper’s direction evokes boys’ adventure comics and Sergio Leone westerns, creating a heightened reality where fascist plots and family vendettas carry equal weight. The final showdown delivers the operatic violence fans expect while resolving the central relationship in ways that feel earned rather than inevitable.
Barry Keoghan is the film’s secret weapon, creating a son who is simultaneously Tommy’s reflection and his opposite. Where Tommy was always calculating, Duke is impulsive. Where Tommy sought respectability, Duke embraces chaos. Their uneasy truce forms the film’s spine, and Keoghan matches Murphy beat for beat in their scenes together.
The Immortal Man is pulp cinema of the highest order—handsome, violent, emotionally resonant, and slightly ridiculous. It knows exactly what it is and trusts its audience to keep up. For fans who wondered if Tommy Shelby had anything left to give, the answer is definitive: there’s life in the old razor yet.
Stream Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man on Netflix now and witness Cillian Murphy’s triumphant return as Tommy Shelby. The cap still fits.
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