As a novel, Brighton Rock is melodrama transfigured by intensity of vision; whether we like it or not, the intensity depends on a feeling that Greene shares much of Pinkie’s disgust at the fallen state of humanity, as represented by the Brighton holiday crowds, with their trivial amusements and sordid lusts. Pinkie may be no more than a vicious boy, but for Greene he is closer to God than are those without faith; his wickedness finds a mirror in the goodness of Rose, the young Catholic waitress whom he seduces to prevent her from testifying against him in court. Both are alert to something deeper than Ida’s kindly, impersonal rationalism; as J.M. Coetzee writes in his introduction to a recent edition of the novel, ‘They are prepared ... to confront ultimate questions, while she is not.’

Greene’s paradoxical theological argument is present in Boulting’s film in a muted, partial way; less can be said for this remake by Rowan Joffe, previously best-known as the screenwriter of the glib George Clooney thriller The American (2010). Joffe has updated the action to 1964, erasing much of the story’s original social context at a stroke: the original Pinkie was a child of the Depression, and while Greene never refers directly to international events, the sense of a society nearing collapse is very much of its period (the novel was published in 1938).

Joffe’s film is more about a clash between generations, especially since Helen Mirren, as Ida, is a couple of decades older than Baddeley was in the same role. Heading off on a stolen scooter for a rendezvous with a rival gang, Pinkie (Sam Riley) inadvertently finds himself at the head of a procession of mods on their way to confront their own rivals, the rockers. But this deeply reactionary anti-hero can’t plausibly be aligned with any aspect of a rising youth culture, even if his bedroom door is decorated, absurdly, with a poster for Monte Hellman’s B-movie Back Door to Hell (1964). 

Greene is a ‘cinematic’ author in a very specific sense; he heightens atmosphere through lists of shabby details like items in an indictment (‘the washstand, the open door where the jerry stood, the brass balls at the bed end’). Joffe manages to reproduce a fair number of these touches, yet there is something opportunistic, even crass, about many of the stylistic flourishes he adds on his own account. After Pinkie and Rose (Andrea Riseborough) confess their beliefs to one another, the camera tracks along the pier to a ballroom lit up against the night sky like a Christmas tree: not exactly heaven, but as near as either of them are likely to get in this life. It is effective, but less than apt; it verges on painting Pinkie and his men as a dark force in an essentially benign world.

The casting, too, is faintly off-key. Mirren’s Ida is more severe and more perceptive than her counterpart in the novel, without the ringing laugh and vulgar sensuality of the figure described by Greene with such memorable distaste. Riley’s dark, accusing eyes and sick-to-the-stomach expression convey a vulnerability less menacing than Attenborough’s ageless deadpan; his talk of hellfire sounds like bravado rather than the testimony of a self-convicted sinner. Only Riseborough seems in tune with the material: her Rose is convincingly gawky and tremulous, yet defiant in her love for the boy whose evil she recognises and accepts.

The cumulative effect of Joffe’s approach is to sentimentalise Pinkie, allowing us to wonder whether deep down he may be capable of human feeling after all. On the edge of a cliff, he grips Rose and threatens to push her over; but a moment later he relents, and they’re locked in an embrace. The music builds, the waves crash, the camera rises: a conventional Hollywood clinch, where the overwhelmingly familiar rhetoric cancels out our qualms. After that, it is no surprise that the novel’s bleak ending is expunged in favour of the ambiguous wrap-up devised by Greene for his 1947 script. It confirms this new Brighton Rock as one more classy-yet-commercial exploitation of Britain’s literary heritage: it would be a stretch to think that Joffe has anything of his own to say about the mysteries of innocence and guilt.

Brighton Rock, written and directed by Rowan Joffe. 111 minutes. Rated M. Released April 14.