Former Mob Boss Gives His Verdict on Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man

➡ Michael Francis reviews the movie “Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man,” a continuation of the popular TV series. The film, set in 1940 during World War II, follows the story of Tommy Shelby, the leader of the Peaky Blinders gang, who is pulled back into chaos when his family and nation face threats tied to his past. The plot involves a scheme by the Nazis to crash the UK’s economy using counterfeit currency, requiring an insider’s help. Michael encourages viewers to watch both the series and the movie, praising the performances of the actors and the compelling storyline.
➡ The story explores the struggle of a man, Tommy Shelby, who has lived a life of war and crime, and his difficulty in adjusting to a normal life. His son, Duke, is a ruthless character who is willing to compromise his values for money, causing tension between them. The backdrop of World War II and the threat of the Nazis taking over the UK adds to this tension. The story also delves into Tommy’s internal conflict, his haunting past, and his struggle to save his son and his country.
➡ The Peaky Blinders movie is a dark, intense wartime thriller that concludes Tommy Shelby’s story and sets up potential future spin-offs. It features strong performances and high production values, but opinions vary on its pacing and resolution of loose ends. The film explores the brutal yet evolving relationship between Tommy and his son, Duke, amidst family conflicts and tragedies. It’s available on Netflix and is recommended for fans of crime movies and intense stories.
➡ The speaker emphasizes the importance of maintaining a healthy weight for overall health and encourages the use of available resources to achieve this. They also express a sincere desire for blessings and peace for everyone, including an end to ongoing conflicts. They invite listeners to join their online community platform, which offers various courses, discussions, and a sense of community for a small monthly fee. The speaker believes this platform can provide valuable benefits and connections for its members.

Foreign. Welcome to another sit down with Michael Francis. Hope everybody is doing well. All is very good, very blessed on this end. My friends, as always, I give all the praise, honor and glory to our God and Thanksgiving. Why? Because he deserves it. You guys loved when I was doing these movie reviews and TV series reviews. But now Peaky Blinders, the Immortal man, that’s the title of the movie that I’m going to review today and it’s based upon the series Peaky Blinders. Now I don’t know how many of you have seen that series. It’s a terrific series.

I loved it. Let me give you the backstory. I started watching it, you know, years ago when it first came out and I couldn’t get through it because I couldn’t understand the language. You know, they speak differently back there, the dialect, you know, the accent, it’s hard to pick up. So I got disgusted, I turned it off. Then my brother in law comes to me, he says, no, Michael, put the subtitles on it. Ah, Dean, I don’t like to watch subtitles. He said, listen to me because you’re gonna love this series. It’s brilliant. Put the subtitles on, you’ll get used to it.

So I did that took me a little bit. I did get used to it and then love the series. So now I’m used to watching subtitles. It was brilliant. Cillian Murphy. Brilliant, brilliant. Tom Hardy plays a. I think it’s a Sephardic Jew. Don’t come after me if Sephardic is the wrong word. But one of those Jews that. And he’s a criminal. But he was brilliant. It was such a brilliant role for him. You’re gonna love it, Bad guy. But you’re gonna love it, I guarantee. So you gotta watch the series. It was terrific. It lasted for a couple of years and then that was the end of it.

So now the movie is kind of a continuation of that. Peaky Blinders was a gang that, that ran a great part a couple of cities there in the United Kingdom back in the 20s, 30s. And Cillian Murphy is the leader of the Peaky Blinders. Tommy Shelby is his character, his brother is involved in it, his sister, all the women are involved in this, even his mother. It’s different than the mafia, obviously we didn’t involve women, but it’s just terrific. And you know, British actors are just brilliant. I have to say that their training, they’re just brilliant.

They really are. And Cillian Murphy, he was terrific in this. So, so now that’s the series. It ends. And now we have the movie. The movie takes place in 1940. World War II is upon us. The backdrop of the movie is that the Nazis are now trying to take over the United Kingdom, defeat the United Kingdom. So, you know, it’s not only fighting and battling, you have other ways to try to destroy a country. And if you can do it economically, you got a good shot at destroying the country. So the Nazis come up with a scheme.

They. They create about 300 million pounds, which is the UK currency, and it’s counterfeit, and they want to infiltrate it or put it into the system to kind of crash the economy of the United Kingdom. So they have to get an insider in order to have that done. So that’s kind of the backdrop of the movie. Now, I took a lot of notes, so I’m going to read some of them because I don’t want to forget and I’m not going to. I mean, still watch it, watch it after review. I’m not going to give everything away.

I’m not going to tell you everything that happens, but I’m going to give you a. Hopefully it’ll get you interested not only in the movie, but in the series. Because I’m telling you, you’re going to love it if you watch it, Without a doubt. So it’s Peaky Blinders. The Immortal Man. The Immortal Man. Does that mean he lives forever? Well, I think we all live forever. We’re going to die on earth, of course, and this body is going to go, at least for a time. But as Christians, we believe our soul goes immediately, one place or another, either heaven or hell.

And then at some point in time, our bodies in heaven will be reunited with our spirit, our souls. That’s what we believe. But all the other faiths believe in immortality. Unless you’re an atheist, I think you don’t believe in that. So the Immortal Man. A good title and we’ll see if it really applies to the movie. So let me read a little bit for you. It’s the feature film continuation of the hit BBC Netflix series. It’s directed by Tom Hopper, written by Stephen Knight, starred Cillian Murphy. He’s terrific, reprising his iconic role as Tommy Shelby. And his sister Sophie Rundle Ada is in it.

Paki Lee plays Johnny Dogs. And, oh, there’s a new character, Tim Roth. He plays the Nazi in this and he’s terrific. Tim Roth’s a great actor. And then we have his son that comes in. His son is a duke and he’s played by Barry Keegan. I never heard of this guy, but he was brilliant, I can tell you that. So let me, let me read the story. Set in Birmingham in 1940, it’s during the early days of World War II. Tommy has been living in self imposed rural exile. He’s haunted by his past. He’s writing memoirs and he’s appearing as a shell of his former self because he was a pretty strong character, but he was a strong, quiet type of character.

He was brilliant, I have to tell you. And he kind of continues that, that same character here, he’s pulled back into the chaos when his family and the nation face threats tied to his legacy. His son Duke has taken over the Peaky Blinders and struck a dangerous deal involving counterfeit currency, what I just described, and war supplies that could destabilize Britain’s wartime economy. With Nazi involvement, Tommy must confront old demons, family rifts and a new enemy while reckoning whether his empire can endure. I’m going to give you like 10 major takeaways from the movie and I’ll make my comment on him.

All right, everyone. Right when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in. That’s me. Every time I say I’m done for the night and Cammie comes back with another bottle of the Oreni wine. I can’t help it. The wine is that good. Try it for yourself. Tommy’s immortality, is it a curse or a gift? You know, I have to tell you this, people, that’s a tough life. The organized crime, the criminal lifestyle. I can bet to say that most people that were involved in that, it really affects them in a bad way when it’s over.

Now, a lot of times it’s over prematurely. Who gets killed, who goes to prison, whatever. But the aftermath is not good. And we see Tommy really struggling through this because he lost his whole family. His whole family was taken down because they were all part of this. He’s really struggling with the death of his brother, who he’s very close to. And I’m not going to give away the plot into how his brother died. It was revealed in the series and they talk about it here again, but he’s really laboring over this. He’s a shell of himself, thinking about everything that went on during that life.

And you know something people, my wife tells me, and I know this for a fact, that I get pretty rough at night, in my sleep, in dreams, and sometimes I’m fighting. I mean, there was one night, you know, I watch sometimes, my wife doesn’t like the television on. I like the television it puts me to sleep. Right. I’ve just always been that way. She doesn’t like it. She likes it dark. So I go on my computer and I put my earplug in and I watch something that puts me to sleep. Well, one time I gave such a punch that I punched my computer, went flying across the other part of the room.

Who was I fighting with? I don’t know. But you know, the demons come out at some point when you’ve experienced and you lived a lot of stuff that had an impression on you. For me, it comes out in my sleep. And other times too, you get flashbacks. You think of things. I spent over 20 years in that life and I grew up with it. I saw stuff that went on with my father. I saw a lot of bad stuff. People. I have to be honest with you. And you take it with you now. I’m blessed now because I’m a person of faith.

I got a wonderful family around me. My life has been transformed in many ways. So, you know, it. It doesn’t hit me to that degree, but at times it does. And that’s what Tommy Shelby is going through now. It reflects Tommy’s larger than life reputation and his inability to escape his past or find peace. And I understand that it’s very hard to escape your past when you have something that was so such. Made such an impression on you in your life, you know, had such an impact on you in your life. When you see people die, you know, when you’ve been through the wars, when you’ve gone through prison, I mean, it has an impact.

There’s no question about it. He’s haunted by ghosts, literal and figurative. Okay? And I’ll leave it at that. From the series and the story explores whether a man built for war and crime can ever truly retire. Think about that. Can a man built for war and crime ever truly retire? Can somebody in the military that’s seen it all, that’s witnessed death, that’s witnessed such horrible things that you see during wartime, you know, maybe you’re in a foxhole with somebody, your friend got blown apart, who knows? You see horrible things. Can you ever fully retire or can you ever really fully readjust to normal life? I don’t know.

It’s a question some of you may answer that you don’t only have to be in a mob life. A cop sometimes, you know, cops have a lot of issues because of what they witness. Fireman, you have no idea what these first responders go through. Some of the things I was recently in Napa Valley head On collision, two people died. Everybody in the car was over 70. One guy was drunk. He veered off head on collision with four people over 70 in the car. Two died. The other bodies were thrown out of the car. Do you ever recover from that? You know, things happen in life that are so hard for us to overcome.

You know, whether you’re in the mob, the street life, or just in. In life, things happen. So can Tommy Shelby ever recover? That’s what this is about. Number two, legacy and the next generation. Duke, that’s his son. He represents the brutal, amoral evolution of the Shelby empire. This kid is brutal. He really is. Father and son tension drives much of the drama. You see it throughout the movie, highlighting how Tommy’s methods and absence have shaped and endangered his heir. Tommy feels responsible. He doesn’t have a good relationship with his son, and his son is very. Is estranged.

And he’s very upset with the father because the father didn’t do anything for him. He says, my family didn’t do anything for him. That’s why he’s willing to go along with the Nazis and. And help destroy the United Kingdom. He said, nobody ever did anything for me. I have no allegiance to anybody. So when Tim Roth, the Nazi, meets with him, he said, I’ll do it, no problem. Right? I don’t owe anything to anybody. Tough man. I gotta tell you. You know, I love my father dearly, no question about it. But when I walked away, yeah, we had tension between us.

I didn’t see him for 10 years. 10 years until he came to me when he realized everything that I was doing. And. And regardless, when anybody says out there I wasn’t putting anybody in prison, I’m not going to be redundant on that. You know the story, okay? Did what I did the way I did it, to make sure nobody got hurt. Nobody did get hurt, regardless of anything else you hear out there. They don’t know. They just like to talk as views. But it was tough because my dad and I, you know, we were part of that life.

And he just didn’t understand initially why I would walk away. And then he did understand. And as time went on as things, he. He understood and we got back together. And I was so happy for that because I love my dad. It was never the same. But look, I love my dad. My dad loved me. And you don’t break that love. Regardless of circumstances that happen, you don’t break that love. But I understand this tension. You know, that sometimes happens, especially when you had a strong relationship at one time. You see this through the movie, World War II is a new battlefield.

The film shifts the gang’s criminal world into into the context of a national crisis. Birmingham is bombed. That’s a big city in. In the uk, war production is targeted and personal betrayals intersect with geopolitical threats. Blending gangster noir with historical drama. What they’re meaning there is, is that, you know, the backlight of the World War II and what the Nazis were trying to do in UK to take over all of Europe is, is set against the tension between father and son here. Because Tommy Shelby, the father, he doesn’t want to see the Nazis take over the UK and he has a son who doesn’t care.

He said, nobody ever did anything for me. I’m going to capitalize on this. You’re going to pay me, I’m going to do it. And there’s tension there. Tommy doesn’t want this done. The son is all for it. Okay. Family loyalty versus self destruction. These are takeaways. Ada, who is Tommy Shelby’s sister, and other returning Shelbys try to pull Tommy back into the life. They say, you got to come and help your son. And he doesn’t want to. Old wounds, losses, like Polly, his mother and Ruby from the series and the new ones test whether blood ties can survive.

Ambition betraying ideology. Tommy’s so broken up over his past life, he just doesn’t want to go back into it. He doesn’t want any part of it. He’s dealing with demons, he’s dealing with ghosts, he’s writing his memoirs, he’s laboring over what kind of life he led and he doesn’t want any part of it. And I get it. What’s the moral compromise? Well, his son Duke, he’s a Brit, but he’ll compromise for money. That’s it. Because he said, nobody ever did anything for me. This country didn’t do anything for me. My father didn’t do anything for me.

What do I owe anybody? I don’t owe anybody anything, you know, nothing. So he’s willing to compromise his values to make some money. Because as far as he concerned, the nobody did anything and he doesn’t owe anything to anybody. The counterfeit scheme and war profiteering show how crime scales to threaten entire nations. Yes. Let me tell you something, people. The Roman Empire, it was conquered from within. Why? Weakened military, weakened economy and weakened morality. We’re seeing that to a degree in the United States. That’s why you can hate Trump, but thank him for building up our military because we need it and we need an administration and Leadership that will build up our economy, not destroy it.

Okay. They’ve done a great part in trying to destroy it by putting us $39 trillion into debt. We have to overcome that. And immorality. Don’t let me go there, people. You know what’s going on. Whenever, when there is a, a certain contingency in our country that’s okay with trans men or trans women, whatever they’re called, compete against women and, and, and, and expose themselves in women’s bathroom. There’s something wrong. Something wrong. And we have to correct that here. We have to have. They all three have to tie together morality. Our economy has to be humming and our, our military has to be humming.

You destroy those three, you destroy the country. Easy to take over. That’s what China wants to do to us. We. Okay. Haunting and melancholy tone. Murphy Cillian Murphy brings deeper introspection and melancholy to Tommy. The film feels like a cinematic epilogue and it does more spiritual and reflective than some peak gangtion gangster action of the show with strong visual flare. There’s some horse sequences and there’s bombed out cityscapes. Yeah, they do a good job. The cinematography is really well. And what we’re getting throughout this whole movie, we’re getting inside of Tommy. How haunted he is, how, you know, depressed and how despaired he is and how conflicted he is when they need him to go back because his son is about to do something wrong.

And he doesn’t want that to happen, but he doesn’t want to get back into the life. He knows it’s going to be tough. He doesn’t want to revisit it. So now he’s, he’s. He’s in a conflict within himself and he has these flashbacks of things that happened. It’s very dark. People telling you it’s very dark. Revenge. And reckoning Tommy’s return isn’t just a rescue. He isn’t trying just to rescue both his son and the country. It’s a final confrontation with his own myth. He knows he’s going back really to face himself because this is who he was.

He created that. Expect brutal clashes, strategic mind games and emotional showdowns typical of Stephen Knight’s writing. The writer, he’s terrific. Okay. Cinematic upgrade. Bigger scope than this series. Yes. Cinematic cinematography wise, yes. But it’s a movie, you can do that. Theatrical visuals, a killer soundtrack. I didn’t like the soundtrack, I’m gonna be honest with you. But it’s very upscale. I don’t know punk rock music. I think punk rock music. If you’re into punk rock, you’re gonna like it. I didn’t care for it. It didn’t do anything for me. But it certainly applies to the movie. No question about it.

I’m just not into it. But the, the music is good, if you like that stuff. It heightens the stakes. It aims to give fans a proper send off while feeling like a movie, not just an extended episode. And you know, that’s important. This is a movie. It’s not just the final episode of Peaky Blinders. We already saw that, so it’s got to be big in scope for the movie. And I think he did a good job with that. Again, very dark, but I think he did a good job getting that point across and putting some finality to it.

End of an era with potential ripples Many view this as the concluding chapter for Tommy Shelby’s story. It passes the torch in ways that could set up future spin offs next generation Peaky Blinders with his son in charge while delivering the stylish violence, razor sharp dialogue and, and by order of the Peaky Blinders energies that fans crave. Yeah, look, they had a cult following with Peaky Blinders. I would love to have seen it continue. I mean, but how much can you make of a series? You know, there aren’t many series like Law and Order that have been going on for God knows how many ice tea.

Is that what, 20 years or something? There aren’t many series that go the distance like that. You know, they have a limited span. Even the God, I mean even the Sopranos had a limited span. What was it, six series? I, I mean, six seasons. I think, you know, you can’t, you can’t go much further than that, but I would love to see it. You know, I, I think they can create a new storyline if you’ve watched the full series. The movie rewards familiarity with callbacks while standing as a self contained, if intense wartime thriller. Reception is strong on Murphy’s performance and the production values, though opinions vary on how neatly it ties up loose ends or handles pacing.

So it’s streaming now on Netflix. I’m not going to tell you the ending. The ending is, is pretty harsh, it really is. But it’s an ending that I somewhat expected if we were going to put finality on this. The relationship between father and son is brutal at first, but it kind of softens, you know, look, blood is blood, thicker than water. I gotta tell you something, you know, people I know I may be moving on to something, but it’s within the context of the movie. You know, I used to think blood is thicker than water, and I guess in the physical sense, it is, but I’ve seen so many families turn against one another, and I’ve seen so many friends really bond together, so.

And look at a husband and wife, not the same blood. There’s a different bond there, of course, but, you know, blood is thicker than water physically, but it doesn’t always apply to relationships. It doesn’t mean a relationship is going to last. We know we’ve seen horrors among families fighting over wills, fighting over money, fighting over anything that you can imagine. You know, there’s people in families sometimes don’t talk for 10, 15, 20 years, you know, because they get upset with one another. It’s a terrible thing. It shouldn’t happen. But, you know, there is a. A conflict here, and then a reckoning of some sort between Tommy Shelby and his son Duke.

And there is another tragedy that happens here with a family member. And that was very sad, and it was very cold. It really was. But in a way, it kind of brought Tommy and. And Duke, his son, together. But that’s. That made me think a lot, you know, really. You know, people. I’ve said this. When I was in prison and it became public that I walked away, the FBI came into the prison, and they said to me, michael, words all over the street, there’s a contract on your life, and your father has gone along with the contract.

Now, I told him at that point, I said, look, let me worry about my father. Did I believe it? Listen, my father didn’t know at first what was going on until I was able to explain to him, you know, the way I was able to get through to him what I was doing and why. I’m not going to say 100 approved of it, because he didn’t know if I could pull it off. But I always swore to him, I said, dad, nobody’s going to go to jail because of anything I say. I’m gonna. You know what? You know me, and you know that I can handle certain things.

There’s going to be a price. I’m going to do time, but I’m not going to put anybody in prison. But the point is that he may have went along with it on the surface because he didn’t know at first what I was going to do. But then he understood. And I can tell you this right now, my father would have never, never put a gun to the back of my head. No way, no shape or form. I didn’t believe that at all, not for one minute. As a matter of fact, if it came to that, we would have fought together.

I really believe that. So I want to dismiss that. What can I say? You know, how could you ever think that way? Now, I got to tell you this. I relayed this story. There was two brothers in that life that did kill their own father. It did. And I told the story because allegedly he was having an affair with another made guy’s wife or sister or, you know, mother or daughter, whatever. You don’t do that in that life. You pay for it with your life. But for the two sons to take their father out didn’t have to be that way.

They could have pushed it off, I’m sure. Maybe they thought that that was the right thing to do. They were given the order. I don’t know. I really don’t know. I don’t know all the circumstances surrounding it. I just know because I was close with one of them. I didn’t even want to know, quite honestly. But, you know, you’re going to see a reconcile here between father and son. That much I can tell you. But the movie doesn’t end well, in my view. You may see differently, but it doesn’t end well, in my view. But again, I hope I didn’t give a lot away.

I just gave you the, you know, the underlying plot and some of the things that occurred during the movie. But it’s on Netflix, and I definitely recommend that you watch it. And then I recommend that you go back and watch the series. And I put the subtitles on in the movie also. I had to. So there. That’s it. I mean, great movie. Go and watch it. You know, maybe it’s going to bring out some emotion in you. You know, some of you people that may be struggling with a relationship within your family, father and son, I hear it all the time.

I actually mentor some people that were going through that. I had a rough time, difficult time with one of my boys, with both of my boys, actually, for a time. And so I get it. I understand it. But we always brought it back together, thank God. And, you know, that’s what you want to do. Look, you don’t want to see families falling apart, and this is a very dramatic falling apart because of the lifestyle that they live. But you don’t want to see that. So, people, again, I highly recommend that you watch the movie, be prepared, get some popcorn even in your house.

But it is dark. You’re not going to come out of there jumping for joy and be happy. But if you’re into crime movies and you’re into pretty intense stories and you love these British actors like I do. They’re brilliant. I think you’ll enjoy the movie. And again, repeating myself. Go back and watch the series, my friends. That’s it for today. How do I always leave you? Same way. Never going to change. Be safe. Please be safe. So much stuff going around those people. Every single day we’re hearing about something. You know, I’m only man. I’m prayerful that things are going to turn around.

I really am. So be safe. Especially you ladies. Watch your surroundings. You know, what happened to this poor girl? God, I. I think of it and it just gets me sick. This poor girl in Chicago walking along the lakefront there with her friends and some idiot illegal, of course, migrant criminal, shoots her. Shoots her for no damn reason. But you know what? So, ladies, you got to be safe. Don’t take anything for granted wherever you are, because there are enemies lurking within our midst. Trust me on that. I have five daughters. I tell them, be careful.

My wife, you go to a parking lot, you know, for going into shop. Be careful. Look around. Anybody looks suspicious, don’t go out. Stay, wait till they leave. Call me, whatever. You got to be careful today. Be healthy people. You always say, mike, you look pretty good for your age. That’s because I try to take care of myself. And I’m blessed because I have people around me that are. That are concerned about my health. So they keep me on point. I do some exercise. I take some supplements that I think are going to work for me.

Try not to get, you know, overweight, because that’s a killer. Tough on our organs. No good to be overweight, people. You got to do your best to slim down. We have drugs out there that’ll help you, whatever it takes. Don’t put that much stress on your organs. So be safe, be healthy. God bless each and every one of you. And people, I really mean that. I don’t just say it. When we as Christians say God bless, we mean it. We want God bless. Because if God blesses all of us, we got a better world to live in.

So God bless each and every one of you. Your family, your friends, your loved ones, communities, neighborhoods. And yes, God bless America. And God bless this conflict that’s going on. I don’t mean it that way. I mean, let it end. We had enough tragedy here. Let it end, and let it end the right way. For the benefit of everybody involved, for the major benefit. Let the tyrants be taken away and let people live in peace. That’s what we want. See you next time. Take care. If I haven’t invited you already, I’m inviting you now to our school platform, our membership platform.

You know, you’re going to really benefit from it. I’m telling you, you’re going to get a lot of me. I put courses in there on business, on negotiation, on leadership. We do zoom calls a couple of times a month. We even do Bible studies. I hold Q&As for all of you that are interested in the mob life or anything else that you think I might be able to help you with. But more than that, it’s a community of like minded people that are really benefiting one another. People are doing business with one another, they’re becoming friends.

It’s just a great platform. It’s something that we’re missing, I believe, this sense of community, we’re missing it in this country. We’re trying to bring it back. So I invite you, and I gotta tell you this, this is an offer you really shouldn’t refuse. Go on. These platforms, they’re going to charge you an arm and a leg. We charge 10 bucks a month and really that’s just to maintain everything that we do there. We want you in there, we want you to enjoy it and we want you to feel that sense of community again. So if you want more of me, go to michaelfrancise.com family an offer you shouldn’t refuse.

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