A Thousand Blows

Blood, Bustles, and the East End Squeeze

Victorian period pieces and I have a rocky relationship. Usually, it's all drawing-room repression or soot-faced kids. Steven Knight is different. The creator of Peaky Blinders doesn't do polite history; he does loud, bruised, stylized myths. His latest, A Thousand Blows, hits that same frequency, treating 19th-century London with the kind of gritty reverence most directors save for 1970s New York.



We're stuck in the East End here, far from the polished boots of the upper class. Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby) and his buddy Alec (Francis Lovehall) are fresh from Jamaica. There's this great, slightly ridiculous detail that Hezekiah actually wants to be a lion tamer. But the city has other plans, and he quickly ends up trading blows in the cramped, suffocating basement of a pub called the Blue Coat Boy.

Whether that quick slide into the criminal world works for you depends on how much patience you have for Knight’s dramatic, heavy-handed style. Still, there’s a gritty, unwashed feel to the setting that kept me hooked throughout.