"Copper" settles into a cycle of stilted, stagy exposition — there's all that history to explain — punctuated by beatings, shootings and knifings that have a protracted, antique brutality.
Given that huge portions of the movie are devoted to exposition (there's a crushing amount of explanation required), Mr. Jackson has simmered the novel down to the most compact action-epic that could be made of it.
Despite that, and despite quirks of exposition (there are some hard slogs and baffling transitions), "Teenage" is a rich, rewarding book that makes an important contribution to cultural history.
From David's penchant for emptying his beers into a living-room houseplant (for a cheap visual gag — what, is something wrong with the sink?) to Hannah's compulsion to spill secrets to a stranger (for the convenient delivery of exposition) there's not a shred of plausibility anywhere onstage.
The show-off soundtrack, the roving accents, the clunky exposition – there were plenty of reasons to give up on Peaky Blinders (BBC2) during its first series, but this stylish, flawed drama still built up enough of a following to justify a second series, which began last night.
