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This is, sadly, the final movie directed by Roger Michell , the British film and theater director who, starting in the late ‘90s, worked quite fruitfully in the realms of mainstream romantic comedy (“ Notting Hill ”) and drama (“ Changing Lanes ”) and could also hit it almost out of the park with edgier fare like “ Enduring Love ” and “Venus” as the early aughts went on. Don’t sleep on his 1993 British miniseries “The Buddha of Suburbia,” the first of several collaboration with writer Hanif Kureishi . “The Duke” is not his all-time-best picture, but it’s a very strong one, and it showcases his varied strengths as a filmmaker rather nicely.

The movie is based on a true, and indeed peculiar caper: the 1961 theft from the National Gallery of a Goya portrait, painted around 1812, of the Duke of Wellington. Jim Broadbent , clearly delighted with his meaty role, plays Kempton Bunton, an enlightened working man in Newcastle on Tyme whose detailed and fervent beliefs concerning the rights of the lower classes and the elderly consistently get him fired from whatever job he manages to procure. (First he’s a cab driver, then pushing loaves about at a bread factory.) He’s also an amateur playwright. Much to his wife Dorothy’s consternation, one of his subjects is the death of their teen daughter.

Richard Bean and Clive Coleman ’s script introduces us to Kempton in court for the theft, and then goes six months back to present a portrait of the man’s eccentric sense of activism. A couple of inspectors come around to his house. Seems he has a television in the family flat. But he hasn’t got a BBC license, which was required at the time. Well, Kempton explains, while he does indeed have a television, he has removed from it the coil that allows reception of the BBC. No BBC, no license, he explains. He insists the fee is an unfair tax. And while he’s getting on in years himself, he thinks that the fee should be waived for the elderly who might not be able to easily afford it.

Later in the movie, when the theft has happened and investigators are examining Kempton’s “ransom” note—he’ll return the painting in exchange for money to pay for a score of fees—a woman examining the written demands calls Kempton “a Don Quixote type.” Exactly, and with all the energy too. As Dorothy, Helen Mirren beautifully conveys both the exasperation and love the character feels for Kempton, while Broadbent makes Kempton both kind of admirable and a little bit ridiculous.

If you’ve ever seen his documentary “Nothing Like A Dame,” released here as “Tea With the Dames,” which chronicled conversations between the Dames Judi Dench , Maggie Smith , Eileen Atkins , and Joan Plowright , you know that Michell adored and revered actors. So it’s hardly surprising that the movie is beautifully acted from the top all the way down. Fionn Whitehead is remarkably ingratiating as Kempton’s teenage son, who believes in his dad utterly—indeed, more utterly that we’re initially shown. And Matthew Goode is drolly understated as Kempton’s lawyer, who winds up very surprised by the jury’s verdict.

The pace is spanking and Michell does some crafty misdirection, so to speak, that adds an element of mystery to the scenario. Tidy but hardly pat, “The Duke” is a refined good time at the movies. 

Now playing in select theaters.

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film Credits

The Duke (2022)

Rated R for language and brief sexuality.

Jim Broadbent as Kempton Bunton

Helen Mirren as Dorothy Bunton

Matthew Goode as Jeremy Hutchinson QC

Aimee Kelly as Irene Boslover

Fionn Whitehead as Jackie

Charlotte Spencer as Pammy

• Roger Michell
• Richard Bean
• Clive Coleman

Cinematographer

• Kristina Hetherington
• George Fenton

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The Unexpected Sadness of “The Duke”

By Anthony Lane

The British film director Roger Michell died last year. His death was sudden and premature: he was only sixty-five. By all accounts a kindly soul, full of wise counsel, he has been much mourned; according to Kate Winslet , who worked with him on “Blackbird” (2019), he was “the master of no fuss.” “The Duke,” one of his most genial features, turned out to be his last. Nobody who saw it, as I did, at a festival in the fall of 2020 imagined that it would be kept from public view for so long by the global pandemic , still less that, by a cheerless irony, Michell would not live to see “The Duke” released. Now, at last, it’s here.

Despite the title, this is not a costume drama, set in the loftier reaches of the aristocracy. Most of the story, until we arrive at the final stretch, takes place in Newcastle upon Tyne, in northeast England, in 1961. Here, in an ill-lit house, dwells Kempton Bunton (Jim Broadbent). What lord could boast a name more sonorous? Kempton is a working-class hero, or, at any rate, he would be if he could hold down a job. He is fired from a local taxi firm, in part for being constitutionally unable to leave his passengers in peace, and then from a bakery, for defending an Asian colleague from a racist superior. In his spare time, of which there is plenty, Kempton writes plays and dispatches them, in vain, to the BBC. He also takes a stand (sometimes sitting down in the rain) against the license fee that all television viewers, including pensioners, must pay. Kempton himself refuses to buy a license, and is sent to prison for his pains. In short, he is so bristling with principles that his wife, Dorothy (Helen Mirren), is in despair. When he invokes “the greater good of mankind,” she retorts, “Mankind? What about your own kind?” Charity stops at home.

Enter the duke. The Duke of Wellington, that is, whose portrait, by Goya , has recently been acquired by the National Gallery, for a sizable sum that Bunton believes should have been spent on more honorable causes. Thus, a plan is hatched. Bunton goes to London. The painting—“It’s not very good, is it?” he says—is stolen overnight, smuggled to Newcastle, and stashed in a wardrobe. Ransom notes are sent to the authorities, who announce that the theft was clearly carried out by a “trained commando,” on the orders of an “international criminal gang.” In fact, the only other person involved is one of the Buntons’ sons, Jackie (Fionn Whitehead), and what he and his father dread most is not the heavy hand of the law but the thought that Dorothy might find out. Which, of course, she does. Bunton returns the picture to the gallery, explaining that he had merely borrowed it. He is arrested, charged, and put on trial. The nation, whose love of an underdog is stronger by far than its taste for nineteenth-century Spanish art, awaits.

“The Duke” is as funny and as implausible as Michell’s “Notting Hill” (1999), the slight difference being that the ludicrous events in the new film happen to be true. There really was a Kempton Bunton, and he was indeed tried, in a tumult of publicity, for pinching the Goya. A satisfying courtroom scene is rarer than you might suppose, and the one that forms the climax of “The Duke” has a comic concision denied to the drawn-out shenanigans of, say, “The Trial of the Chicago 7” (2020). There’s something other than swiftness, though, to Michell’s method. He and his screenwriters, Richard Bean and Clive Coleman, are tapping into the kinship—explored by Dickens, and then by Gilbert and Sullivan—between legal and theatrical practice.

Exhibit A: Jeremy Hutchinson, the barrister who defends Kempton (and who was married, as the movie reminds us, to the great Shakespearean actress Dame Peggy Ashcroft). He is played by Matthew Goode, an actor whose sleek demeanor can seem like a protective shell. Here, however, that very suavity becomes a weapon, gracefully wielded in tandem with his client’s cussedness. When Hutchinson sits down, having made his final pitch to the jury, the prosecutor—his opposite number—looks across at him and smiles, as if to say, “Beautifully done, you bastard.” If this is Goode’s best performance to date, it’s because he conveys the conscious delight with which his character, bewigged and robed, is performing a starring role.

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Like Hutchinson, Kempton rises to the rhetorical occasion, flush with the pride of the autodidact. “I’d just finished reading Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ and I felt a need to explore Sunderland,” he tells the court. Alternately beaming and doleful, his face is that of a Mr. Punch who, in his own mind, has taken more blows from the world than he has dealt. In other words, we are squarely in Broadbent territory, where the stubborn abuts the crumpled, and it’s hard to conceive of anyone else in the part of Kempton. The result can be relished as a companion piece to Michell’s “Le Week-End” (2013), in which Broadbent portrayed a man less plumped-up with confidence, yet equally stuck in a stalled marriage.

On second viewing, “The Duke” loses some of its capering gusto and takes on a surprising hue of sadness. I hadn’t realized, at first, how often we hear about the Buntons’ teen-age daughter, who died in an accident, and how much genuine grievance lurks in Dorothy’s defeated air. The film confirms that one of Michell’s enduring themes was exasperation—an unglamorous emotion, familiar to us all but, unlike rage, seldom given its cinematic due. Hence, perhaps, his interest in autumnal characters; facing and fearing a wintry future, they take stock of what they have done thus far, or frustratingly failed to do. Look at Kempton, grabbing a spot in the limelight before it’s too late; at the widow in “The Mother” (2003), who asks out loud, “Why shouldn’t I be difficult?,” and takes a younger lover; and, above all, at the peppery Peter O’Toole, in “Venus” (2006), slapping himself three times on the cheek and growling, “Come on, old man!” What a harvest of old men and women Roger Michell might have brought to the screen, as he ripened with age. Now we shall never know.

Blood, mud, iron, fire, decapitated horses, and more blood: such are the main components of “The Northman,” a new movie from Robert Eggers . It’s a gutsy piece of work, not only in the reach of its ambition but also in its willingness to show us actual guts. We are in the era of the Vikings, one of whom is our hero. He is a man—or, rather, as somebody says, “a beast, cloaked in man-flesh”—called Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård), who gets to pillage a village, roaring and baying as he glories in the rout, and thinks nothing of using his brow as a battering ram to crush the head of his foe. I couldn’t help wondering what Kempton Bunton would make of him. “Steady on, son,” he’d say, laying a friendly hand on Amleth’s shoulder. “How about a nice cup of tea?”

As a boy, Amleth sees his father, King Aurvandil ( Ethan Hawke ), slain by the foul-hearted Fjölnir (Claes Bang), who is Amleth’s uncle. Just to compound the transgression, Fjölnir carries off the dead man’s widow, Queen Gudrún ( Nicole Kidman ), and marries her. Amleth’s mission, should he choose to accept it, is to avenge this treachery. In short, as his name suggests, he is the ur-Hamlet, though not in every particular; I doubt that he was ever a freshman at Wittenberg, for instance, though he might have enjoyed the hazing. In an unprincely twist, Amleth becomes a rogue and peasant slave, like Maximus in “Gladiator” (2000)—biding his time, and awaiting a grand stage on which to deal the fateful blow.

The biding is a problem for “The Northman.” Amleth comes upon Fjölnir, his target, less than halfway through the film, and you think, Now might he do it pat. One swing of an axe and his retribution would be complete. Instead, we have an hour’s delay, or more, in which Amleth—whose mind, if he has one, is never going to be wracked with the footling indecisions that hamper Hamlet—embarks on an earthy dalliance with Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy), a fellow-slave, and plays a game of what appears to be homicidal Quidditch.

“The Northman” is at once overwhelming and curiously uninvolving. It lacks the momentum of Eggers’s “The Witch” (2015), which was set among Puritan settlers in New England. You felt the shudders of their spiritual dread, as it drove the story onward, whereas the mystical visions that punctuate the new movie—a floating tree, say, hung with bodies—tend to slow the action down. Yet the period detail is unstinting; scholars of Old Norse who were unconvinced by Tony Curtis’s miniskirt, banded with chevrons, in “The Vikings” (1958), will be reassured by Eggers’s dedication. And, to be fair, few directors can draw with such zeal from the deep well of the uncanny. We see a proud king abase himself, on all fours, to lap from a bowl of gore; an unkindness of ravens, kindly pecking the captive Amleth free from the ropes that bind him; and, at the climax, two naked warriors scything each other with swords beside rivers of flaming lava. Do you find this world of brainless savagery so distant from our own as to be beyond belief? Try watching the news. ♦

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The duke review: broadbent & mirren excel in stylish, heartwarming dramedy.

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The incredible true story behind the 1961 theft of Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington comes to life in  The Duke , a stylish new caper from the late Roger Michell ( Notting Hill ) . Those unfamiliar with the actual events will get a kick out of watching them unfold, while even audiences who  do know how everything transpired will likely be engrossed by the untold side of the story. Michell, working from a script by Richard Bean and Clive Coleman, treats the absurd tale with respect and heart, giving  The Duke an earnest touch that elevates the material. Though it lags slightly in the middle, The Duke is an overall delightful depiction of a remarkable true story led by heartwarming performances.

In 1961, Goya's famous Duke of Wellington portrait is put on display in London's National Gallery. Purchased for £140,000 by the British government, its place in the U.K. is considered a point of pride. However, for Newcastle resident Kempton Bunton (Jim Broadbent), the idea that so much money could be spent on such an item while OAPs, or old-age pensioners, must pay for television licenses is unfair. Soon after, Kempton steals the Duke from the Gallery and begins sending ransom notes calling on the government to put some money towards the elderly. What follows is a surprisingly emotional true story as Kempton, with the help of his son Jackie (Fionn Whitehead), fights for what he deems is only right, even while his put-upon wife Dorothy ( Helen Mirren ) wishes he would cease his activism.

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The story of an older man stealing a painting with an eye on raising awareness for a situation involving television licenses might seem rather silly, and Michell wisely leans into the humor of it all.  The Duke has a sprightly energy from its very first minutes, with George Fenton's swinging score buoying the action. Michell occasionally employs split-screens and classic-looking footage to fun effect.  The Duke is further aided by Bean and Coleman's screenplay, which highlights Kempton's earnest nature without getting too sanctimonious. This is a man who sticks to his guns and the film shows exactly why he deserves admiration from the rest of the world. Overall, the movie is a quick affair with its roughly 90-minute runtime, though it does slow somewhat once the painting has been stolen and Kempton is working out his next moves forward. Michell eases the pacing and Bean and Coleman add in some solid character work. Still,  The Duke is at its best when it is focusing on the major events of this experience.

Even with its lighthearted approach, though,  The Duke still finds space for real heart. Kempton and Dorothy lost a daughter years before the film begins, and while their grief never overwhelms the story, it is present. Bean and Coleman depict two sides of grieving here: Dorothy's version, which is to keep everything private and tightly locked up, and Kempton's, which is to interact with it via art. Through their perspectives,  The Duke smartly confronts a difficult topic that many people can likely empathize with. This extra layer gives Kempton's story more depth and shows he's far more than a strangely passionate man who would use a famous art piece for "ransom."

As Kempton, Broadbent nails both his humor and his righteous nature. With the former, Broadbent's comedic timing is on fine display during  The Duke 's later court scenes, pulling laughs from both the audience and the stunned courthouse patrons. He makes Kempton someone to root for, even if some might question his methods. Mirren is reliably excellent as the emotionally repressed Dorothy; when she thaws, or even lets her own grief loose, she tugs at heartstrings.  The Duke is mainly a showcase for these two acting vets, though  Dunkirk  star Whitehead does well as the loyal, yet somewhat lost Jackie.

Real life stories brought to film are often of the heavier, more impactful variety. Still,  The Duke more than justifies its existence through its thoughtful illumination of an odd, but ultimately rather vital true tale. There is humor and emotion in equal measure, and each member of the cast gives a wonderfully authentic performance. As this is sadly Michell's last feature film, there is a slight undercurrent of melancholy here. At the same time, Michell's direction for this movie is something to be celebrated, and hopefully it will be. Anyone looking for an entertaining story about a genuinely good person would be smart in checking out  The Duke.

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The Duke   is now playing in select theaters. It is 96 minutes long and rated R for language and brief sexuality.

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Review: Broadbent, Mirren steal the show in Roger Michell’s last feature ‘The Duke’

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Don’t get too excited, John Wayne fans. “The Duke” has nothing to do with your favorite western movie star. It is, however, a lively and engaging account of the unusual 1961 theft of Francisco Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from London’s National Gallery and the eccentric do-gooder at the center of it all.

It’s also notable as the last narrative feature directed by Roger Michell of “Notting Hill” fame, who died in September at 65.

The great British actor Jim Broadbent (“Topsy-Turvy,” Iris,” “The Iron Lady”) enjoys one of his best roles as Kempton Bunton, a 60-year-old Newcastle cabdriver and wannabe playwright with a fierce independent streak. He also has a dubious set of ethics, at least when it comes to fighting — or, as the case may be, evading — the system.

His ongoing cause célèbre is the license fee the BBC collects to watch its programming. “Free TV for the OAP” (old age pensioners) screams Bunton’s protest placards, which attract the local press and several officials but anger his long-suffering wife. Dorothy (Helen Mirren, also terrific) is a humble housecleaner fed up with her husband’s social consciousness — and the mortifying attention it receives. Confirming her worst fears, Bunton ends up spending 13 days in a nearby prison for standing on principle and refusing to pay the TV tax.

The film kicks into higher gear when Britain makes a big deal of its purchase of the Goya painting for 140,000 pounds (equivalent to about $4.3 million today). The move infuriates Bunton, who thinks the money would be better spent offering free TV to the nation’s pensioners. Yeah, he’s pretty obsessed.

A series of turns leads Bunton, during an ill-conceived trip to London to make his case against the BBC license fee to Parliament and the media, to purloin the Wellington portrait from the National Gallery. That we don’t exactly see the execution of the theft or how Bunton smuggles the painting back to Newcastle may feel jarring, especially given the enormity of the deed, but it’s part of an effective twist. Meanwhile, Bunton sends an anonymous ransom note to the press that helps grease the wheels of the police investigation.

The film’s third act finds Bunton on trial for the theft, which allows Broadbent further opportunity for enjoyable cheek and charm as his character, who’s being defended by twinkly lawyer Jeremy Hutchinson (Matthew Goode), reconfirms his love of community, a lifelong desire to help others, and plans to donate the spoils of the pilfered picture to needy retirees. But will the jury buy it?

Michell, working off a jaunty script by Richard Bean and Clive Coleman, keeps the action bubbling along with little room to ponder the stranger-than-fiction improbability of the steal, one that, with the plethora of security measures and protocols in place nowadays, feels quaint — though in a fun, nostalgic way.

But there’s more at work than just a caper. It’s also the story of a marriage that’s been near-irrevocably damaged by the loss of a child.

Dorothy’s impatience and crankiness with her husband, as well as a seemingly palpable disdain for him, at first seem rooted in his pie-in-the-sky crusades, flighty job choices and how they barely scrape by financially. But as the tale unfolds we learn how, at a certain level, she blames Bunton for the death 13 years earlier and, as a result, refuses to talk to him about their child despite Bunton’s pleas for her to do so.

This thread gives the picture a heartfelt, kitchen-sink gravity. And Mirren is positively transformative, down to the smallest details, as the dowdy, grieving, working-class Dorothy. (It should be said that Broadbent and Mirren are playing younger than their actual ages but pull it off.)

Fionn Whitehead (“Dunkirk,” “Voyagers”) is also winning as the Buntons’ devoted, boatbuilder son, Jackie. The supporting cast is fine, as well: Jack Bandeira as dodgy older son, Kenny; Charlotte Spencer as Kenny’s devious girlfriend, Pammy; and Anna Maxwell Martin as Dorothy’s empathetic employer, Mrs. Gowling. And so are the film’s visual palette, period re-creation and sprightly score.

'The Duke'

Rated : R, for language and brief sexuality. Running time : 1 hour, 36 minutes Playing : Opens Dec. 10 at Laemmle Royal Theatre, West Los Angeles

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clock This article was published more than  2 years ago

‘The Duke’ delivers a sweet message: I am you, and you are me

The populist-minded movie, based on the true story of a 1961 art theft, stars Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren

The quirky and little-known true story — make that the quirky and little-known true- ish story — “The Duke,” based on the 1961 theft of Francisco de Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London, features delightful performances by Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren, both of whom help ground this strenuously heartwarming film in something a little more solid than the ether in which it otherwise seems to be set. Although the action, for the most part, takes place in gritty, working-class Newcastle, and the events it depicts are loosely based on fact, “The Duke” exists in a kind of twee parallel universe of low stakes and charming eccentricity.

Make that one charming, if irascible eccentric in particular: Broadbent’s Kempton Bunton, an underemployed curmudgeon on a government pension who spends most of his time writing unpublished plays and angry letters to the editor about the unfairness of television licenses for retirees on a fixed income. (In England, people pay a sort of tax for the privilege of watching a commercial-free BBC. One protest sign shown in the film reads “Free TV for the OAP,” or old-age pensioner.) When Kempton learns the British government has just forked over 140,000 pounds to keep Goya’s early 19th-century work, which he doesn’t even like, from being purchased by a U.S. collector, Kempton decides — well, better to let the film work its magic, which includes a couple of mild plot twists.

Suffice it to say that the Goya turns up one day under the Buntons’ roof, with the protagonist and his son Jackie (an appealingly indulgent Fionn Whitehead) arguing about not just how to hide it from Kempton’s wife, Dorothy (a decidedly less indulgent — and almost unrecognizable — Mirren), but what to do with it. The latter question is resolved by Kempton’s anonymous announcement to a newspaper that he intends to hold the painted wooden panel for ransom, so to speak, which he will then distribute to the common man.

This Robin Hood-adjacent message is leaned on by director Roger Michell (“ Notting Hill ”) and his writers (Richard Bean and Clive Coleman) with a light touch, bringing a not-so-terribly-serious approach to the film’s populist themes of social justice and income inequality. (Anna Maxwell Martin plays Dorothy’s employer, an upper-crusty woman of liberal leaning for whom Dorothy works as a maid.)

The timeline of the actual incident is compressed from years to months — the quicker to get around to the court case that ensues when Kempton is arrested. Kempton’s lawyer, played by a wryly bemused Matthew Goode, humors his client by arguing that the Goya wasn’t stolen so much as borrowed. Still, although a good portion of the film is taken up by the trial, “The Duke” is no courtroom drama.

The larger moral of the story, which delivers only glancing blows against ethnic bigotry, classism and the inescapable cycle of poverty, while touching on a tender backstory of grief and loss, is quite simple: I am you, and you are me. That altruistic mantra — one that reminds us of our common humanity — is delivered on the stand, eloquently, in a sweet package made sweeter by two of England’s finest actors.

R. At area theaters. Contains coarse language and brief sexuality. 96 minutes.

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The Duke review – art thief takes one for the common man

Roger Michell’s warm take on the true story of how Kempton Bunton acquired the National Gallery’s new Goya features a glorious performance by Jim Broadbent

A ll rise for The Duke, a scrappy underdog yarn that makes a powerful case for the rackety English amateur, the common man who survives by his wits with the odds stacked against him. Kempton Bunton of Byker, for instance, is about as far removed from the Duke of Wellington as a frog is from a prince. But now the Duke is trapped behind the wardrobe in Kempton’s tatty back bedroom, which is one in the eye for the British class system and means that Kempton is sitting pretty, at least for a while.

Roger Michell’s delightful true-crime caper comes bolstered by a terrific lead performance from Jim Broadbent , rattling about the red-brick terraces of early 1960s Newcastle. His Kempton Bunton is a wannabe playwright and soapbox revolutionary, a man who prefers Chekhov to Shakespeare because he feels that the Bard wrote too many plays about kings. By night he’s sitting up in bed reading books by George Orwell. By day he’s tilting at windmills, squabbling with shop-floor managers and getting under the feet of his pinched, knackered wife. As played by Helen Mirren, Dorothy Bunton is constantly cleaning up the mess left by her husband and her two adult sons. She says: “Be sure to use the coasters. You’re not in Leeds now.”

The city of Leeds may be bad in its way, but the real problem is London; it’s taken leave of its senses. Down at the National Gallery, they’ve just spent £140,000 of public money to secure Francisco Goya’s portrait of Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington. “An outstanding example of late-period Goya,” sighs the curator. “Some half-baked portrait by a Spanish drunk,” says Kempton. He argues that the cash would have been better spent providing free TV licences for all the UK’s old age pensioners. Kempton, perhaps relatedly, has recently served a brief prison term for not paying his own TV licence.

Michell and Broadbent previously worked together on 2013’s excellent Le Week-End , in which the actor played a middle-aged professor in meltdown, drunkenly singing along to Bob Dylan inside a poky Paris hotel. The Duke (scripted by Richard Bean and the BBC’s Clive Coleman) is a more obviously crowd-pleasing affair, precision-tooled but big-hearted. Michell does well in capturing a 60s north-east of belching chimney-stacks and rag-and-bone men; a limbo-land Britain, caught between the end of rationing and the birth of the Beatles. Kempton, one suspects, has both boots in the old world - but he can still dream of tomorrow.

What a lovely, rousing, finally moving film this is. The Duke is unashamedly sentimental and resolutely old-fashioned in the best sense of the term: a design classic built along the same lines as That Sinking Feeling, A Private Function or 50s Ealing comedies. In an earlier era, the role of Kempton would have been played by Denholm Elliott or Alastair Sim.

Hauled into court to account for the theft, Kempton is finally given the stage he’s been craving all his life. The man is an upstart, a liar, undeniably a crook. But he’s also an idealist, a committed socialist, and it is this side of Kempton that now comes to the fore. He teases the judge, jokes with the jury and explains that he puts his faith “not in God, but in people”. Meanwhile, up in the public gallery, sit his own band of people. The posh young woman who employs his wife as a cleaner. The exploited co-worker whom he once tried to defend. Individually, in Kempton’s view, these people are all just single bricks. But put them together and you make a house. Put them together and you build Jerusalem.

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The Duke brings British comedy charm and smarts to the true story of one of history’s strangest art heists

On August 21, 1961, a mystery thief broke into London's National Gallery and made off with Francisco Goya's Portrait of the Duke of Wellington, a painting recently acquired by the British Government to the then-cool tune of 140,000 British pounds. Baffled authorities assumed the robbery to be the work of master criminals; little did they know the culprit was a 60-year-old pensioner from Newcastle by the name of Kempton Bunton. Or so he led everyone to believe.

It was a burglary so brazen that it captured the attention of a nation. A replica of the missing painting even showed up as a sight gag in the original James Bond film, 1962's Dr. No, at a time when detectives were so confounded that an arch supervillain may as well have been a plausible suspect.

Bond makes a cameo in The Duke, a lightly fictionalised film about the Novocastrian art thief that transforms him into something of a folk hero – at least as played by a winning Jim Broadbent, who brings the garrulous, idealistic Bunton to life in a performance of vivid wit and charm.

The final feature from the late stage and screen director Roger Michell (Notting Hill; My Cousin Rachel), it's one of those films the British always seem to do so well: a jaunty historical tour spliced with a little cosy subversiveness; ever-so politely rowdy in a way that feels designed to capture cinema's lucrative older audience.

That's not a criticism. The Duke is the kind of film that Hollywood, for better or worse, doesn't make anymore: smart, character-driven, a mischievous twinkle in the eye — a movie that can comfortably entertain an entire family without a glimpse of spandex.

Broadbent is the heart and soul of the film as Bunton, the boisterous Newcastle pensioner who's the very definition of a 'character'. A war veteran, autodidact and wannabe playwright, he's also an anti-establishment agitator and self-styled champion of the common people, much to the chagrin of his — what else — long-suffering wife, Dorothy (Helen Mirren).

"Stop all your agitation," she pleads at one point, Mirren deftly sketching her weariness and exasperation.

Bunton's contentious idealism makes it hard for him to hold down a job, while his adult sons (Fionn Whitehead and Jack Bandeira) dream and scheme and Dorothy takes work as a housekeeper. They've lost a daughter, something neither parent wants to talk about. It's almost certainly fuelling Bunton's heightened sense of the world's injustice.

When we first meet him, this working class warrior is doing battle with the BBC over his campaign to provide free television licenses for the elderly and veterans – a crusade that briefly lands him in the dock.

Bunton could come off as deeply, insufferably righteous in the wrong hands, but Broadbent plays this would-be Robin Hood with a full, magnanimous serve of irresistible Northern humour, while also suggesting a man whose inability to confront loss might be sending him around the bend.

By the time he arrives in London to protest TV licensing, we fully believe he's a man capable of slipping off to the National Gallery and swiping the expensive artwork he regards as a shameful waste of public funds.

"Toffs looking after their own," Bunton mutters, "spending our hard-earned money on a half-baked portrait by some Spanish drunk, of a Duke who was a bastard to his men and who voted against universal suffrage."

The line is characteristic of a screenplay, penned by playwrights Richard Bean and Clive Coleman, that's sprinkled with cheerful anti-establishment jibes, and which delights in lampooning a clueless police department convinced that the robbery must be the work of a devious, cleverly orchestrated crime gang — or, in one of the movie's dry running gags, Italians.

Michell delivers most of this as light comedy, with recurring split-screen mosaics and a vaguely jazzy score (by veteran composer George Fenton) that's in clear dialogue with 60s Hollywood's fondness for art heists (it's a wonder Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers never got their hands on this story).

Yet The Duke is less a caper than a tale of class angst. The film has plenty to say on working class England and the limits of activism, even as it embodies the paradox of its own breezy, tasteful style — historical radicalism seen through the safe lens of chipper, entertaining period nostalgia.

And while Bunton is, in many ways, a classic idealist whose dedication to the so-called common good means he neglects the people around him, Michell and Broadbent eventually flatten those contradictions as they tilt him toward beloved folk hero — complete with a grandstanding bit of courtroom buffoonery and a feel-good peanut gallery chorus right out of a Frank Capra movie.

It's hard to buy into the movie's faith in collective humanity when its designs are so corny, but as a piece of entertainment — with an admirably cheeky pro-theft message — it's extremely satisfying.

The Duke is in cinemas now.

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The Duke Reviews

Thanks to [Broadbent's] performance — and the note-perfect direction of the late, great Roger Michell — a quirky footnote of history becomes a sweet, unexpectedly moving story about solidarity and the power of the underdog.

Full Review | Dec 8, 2023

A true story about a elder who steals a painting in order to help others, demonstrating the philosophy of ubuntu.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | May 28, 2023

Broadbent is absolutely wonderful and gives his best performance in many years.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Feb 22, 2023

English comedies seem to have more than their share of eccentric characters in the very distinct British style of humor. Here, British actor Jim Broadbent fills the bill perfectly, playing a real life British eccentric, Kempton Bunton.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Dec 6, 2022

Designed as a crowd pleaser for the silver screen generation, it can feel a little paint by numbers at times. However thanks to the terrific central performances, colourful caper The Duke proves life certainly ain’t grim up north.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 12, 2022

It just doesn’t feel like anybody is on their A-game. ... It's not a grand finale to [Michell's] career; it's like an encore where he plays an endearing crowdpleaser with a simple chorus about making the world a better place, one we can sing along to.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Aug 20, 2022

Gloriously witty, and comic... wonderful film.

Full Review | Aug 12, 2022

Basically a David and Goliath tale in which the sling and stone are replaced by a cheery attitude and an open heart.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 7, 2022

Directed by the late Roger Michell, this dramatization of the true-life caper of a working-class pensioner stealing a famous portrait and holding it for ransom in exchange for free TV licenses is a simple but charming cup of Northern goodness.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jul 26, 2022

Director Roger Michell's final movie is a charming comedy/drama set in 1961 depicting the infamously true story of how Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington was stolen from the National Gallery by an unlikely thief.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 24, 2022

Little is too shaken or stirred, but it all goes down smoothly and delightfully — and with some bite.

Full Review | Jun 25, 2022

...easy to overlook, but a lot of fun for those who invest their time.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 5, 2022

It’s an old-school British caper in the Ealing Studios tradition, modestly but glowingly crafted and beautifully acted by old pros — and you leave it both buoyant and a little sad. Making that feel easy is hard.

Full Review | May 31, 2022

There are strains of the old Ealing Studios comedies — whimsical tales of plucky Brits taking on the system — running through “The Duke,” a based-on-a-true-story tale that’s enlivened by the pairing of Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | May 29, 2022

You won’t catch anyone accusing Roger Michell of being edgy or innovative. But in his last film, the late director pushes an audiences’ buttons with crowd-pleasing precision.

Full Review | Original Score: B | May 28, 2022

The overall feel proves cheery and enjoyable, a likable nod to people with ideas worth sharing.

Full Review | May 13, 2022

The acting is world-class and Oscar-worthy portraying endearingly eccentric characters who sustain an enduring, but slightly demented, relationship. The result is delightful, moving, and richly satisfying...

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | May 12, 2022

“Torn from the headlines” usually indicates a tragedy in the offing. In case of Kempton Bunton it means head-shaking delights.

Full Review | Original Score: B | May 12, 2022

The Duke is more than just a traditionally made movie about a man who goes on trial for stealing a valuable painting from London's National Gallery. It's also a witty and emotional drama about a family coping with grief.

Full Review | May 9, 2022

Jim Broadbent delivers a performance that is exactly how we want to see a quirky chap behave. His comic timing is flawless. Helen Mirren has less to do, but she does it brilliantly.

Culture | Film

The Duke movie review: expert handling on all sides makes this stranger than fiction story work

Jim Broadbent is priceless in this canny, tender British comedy, based on a real-life art heist that bamboozled the police, as well as the scriptwriters of Bond adventure Dr. No. In 1961, when Goya ’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington disappeared from the National Gallery , those in the know assumed it had been stolen by a “well-funded, international” gang and was now hanging in some arch-criminal’s lair. That a humble Geordie might have nabbed it, and stashed it in the back of a cupboard, was a plot twist no one stopped to consider.

Kempton Bunton sounds like the kind of botanical garden where you get charged £20 to look at a tulip. It’s actually the name of our working class, socialist, feminist hero, who can’t stand the Duke of Wellington (“he voted against universal suffrage!”) and calls Goya “some Spanish drunk!” He hides the painting where his law-abiding wife Dolly (Helen Mirren) can’t see it, then sends letters to the government explaining that he’ll return the masterpiece if his charitable demands are met ( he wants impoverished OAPs to be given free access to TV ). His son, Jackie (Fionn Whitehead), is on his side. But might the whole thing get out of hand and land Bunton in court?

Bunton, an impractical obsessive who’s used to being insulted and dismissed, reaches for quips like someone with a cold reaches for tissues. As Dolly berates him in front of the law, Bunton says cheerfully, “My wife always supports me. In private”. We soon learn the family have been torn apart by grief (years ago, Kempton and Dolly’s teenage daughter was killed in a road accident). The script deals with that in a lovely way, but it’s Broadbent’s eyes – guarded; pugnacious; stunned by the cruelty of the world - that ensure we don’t feel manipulated. He’s a pain in the arse, who’s in pain. The two things can’t be unhooked.

Meanwhile Mirren, out-frumping Judi Dench in Belfast, provides umpteen laughs. It’s pointed out to Dolly that her oldest son may be having sex with his girlfriend in the family’s spare room. Mirren performs an extravagant shudder that both conveys her character’s feelings re ungodly fornication and captures Dolly’s love of drama. This woman should be a stand-up comedian. “Be sure and use the coasters,” she tells her son, “you’re not in Leeds now!”

Director Roger Michell (Notting Hill; Le Week-End) died in 2021. The Duke is a reminder of what we’ve lost. He films Bunton’s trips to London with sly verve; as in The Thomas Crown Affair, we get split screens and fizzy music.

The Duke would work perfectly in a double-bill with I, Daniel Blake. Both are portraits of angry old men who kick up, rather than down. It’s true that the nice characters in The Duke, towards the end, become a little too good. At Bunton’s trial, his various allies - including a smiley Asian ex-colleague (Ashley Kumar) and Dolly’s posh boss (Anna Maxwell Martin) - gather in the gallery. Remember The Simpsons’ bowling team, The Stereotypes? That’s what this lot resemble.

But you can forgive such soppiness. Kempton Bunton sees the bigger picture. So does Michell.

96mins, cert 12A. In cinemas

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The Duke review — Jim Broadbent is the real old Master

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★★★★☆ There’s a hint of Frank Capra in this feelgood dramedy about provincial nobodies versus city slickers. It’s a film that could have been retitled “Mr Bunton Goes to London”, and is based on the true-life tale of Kempton Bunton ( Jim Broadbent ), a Newcastle pensioner who stole Francisco Goya’s Portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London in 1961. But it’s really the story of an eccentric optimist who teaches an unfeeling world about the interconnectedness of human lives. “You make me me, and I make you you,” says Broadbent’s Bunton, attempting to explain his philosophy to baffled barrister Jeremy Hutchinson QC (Matthew Goode). Bunton is in an Old Bailey holding cell at the time, preparing for the film’s

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Time Out says

Jim Broadbent is a riot in this eccentric and touching real-life heist caper

The Duke is a film that has one national treasure (Jim Broadbent) playing another national treasure (Geordie cabbie, social campaigner and wannabe playwright Kempton Bunton), who was accused of stealing another national treasure (Goya’s ‘Portrait of the Duke of Wellington’) from the National Gallery in 1961.

The setting harks back to an era of British life that suddenly feels a lot less distant. With the experience of lockdowns and that Clap for Carers communal spirit fresh in all of our minds, it’s dead easy to rally behind Bunton’s quixotic efforts to secure free TV licences for pensioners – and even his roundabout route to wanted art thief. Access to the telly is, he reasons, the only link many elderly citizens have with their fellow Brits – and the world at large. Stealing the portrait might just get the attention of the nation.

Before the plot gets anywhere near its Thomas Crown -esque middle stretch, in which the painting is pinched in a nocturnal raid via the gallery bins, co-writers Clive Coleman and Richard Bean take time to set up Bunton and his long-suffering wife, Dorothy (Helen Mirren, dialling back to give extra space to her co-star), as a couple in working-class Newcastle. Fionn Whitehead ( Dunkirk ) is an energetic presence as the couple’s supportive but reckless son, Jackie.

Soon, Kempton is fired from his taxi company for giving free rides to struggling locals and running foul of TV licensers for jerry-rigging his telly so it only shows commercial channels. ‘It negates the imperative on me to pay the licence fee,’ he harrumphs. ‘It’s an unfair tax on ordinary people, especially the oldies who can’t afford it.’

Jim Broadbent could play a despot and make you wish he was your uncle 

For The Duke to work, Bunton needs to be likeable even when he’s being pig-headed and annoying. Enter Broadbent, an actor who could play a despot and make you wish he was your uncle. He and Mirren have a lovely chemistry as a couple tethered by a shared sorrow and a deep love. This portrait of a weather-beaten but resilient marriage could slip by as unnoticed as the beige wallpaper in their terraced house, but in these fine actors’ hands it hits you in the feels.

Bunton’s socialist philosophy – ‘I am you, you are me’, as he frames it – is articulated best by his defence barrister (Matthew Goode) as the film heads into courtroom-drama mode. But he’s the exception in a film where social standing isn’t the barrier to smarts, ambition and culture that the powers-that-be think it is. The Duke has fun throughout in leaping back and forth across that social divide to show a ruling class too snobbish to imagine the culprit could be anything other than a gang of international art thieves. We’re shown a clip from Dr No on the Buntons’ TV to reinforce that unconscious bias that it’s Bond villains, not cabbies who steal priceless art.

It’s about the little man sticking two fingers up to the establishment 

The late director Roger Michell ( Notting Hill ) maps out this world of fuming officials, foiled cops and uncaring newspaper editors with a mix of sincerity and sly humour, giving domestic events equal billing with national ones. One token racism subplot aside, it juggles big ideas of social justice with more intimate moments of family life beautifully.

Most of all, and very much in the spirit of classic Ealing comedies like The Lavender Hill Mob and Whisky Galore! , his final movie is about the little man sticking two fingers up to the establishment. It might even restore your faith in the social contract – at least, until you remember that they just got rid of free TV licences for the oldies. Maybe the National Gallery should double security? 

In UK cinemas Feb 25.

Cast and crew

• Screenwriter: Richard Bean, Clive Coleman
• Jim Broadbent
• Fionn Whitehead
• Helen Mirren
• Anna Maxwell Martin
• Roger Michell

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Content Caution

In Theaters

• April 29, 2022
• Jim Broadbent as Kempton Bunton; Helen Mirren as Dorothy Bunton; Fionn Whitehead as Jackie Bunton; Matthew Goode as Jeremy Hutchinson; Anna Maxwell Martin as Mrs Gowling; Jack Bandeira as Kenny Bunton; Aimée Kelly as Irene; Joshua McGuire as Eric Crowther; Charlotte Spencer as Pammy

Home Release Date

• July 26, 2022
• Roger Michell

Distributor

• Sony Pictures Classics

Movie Review

You pay for the name.

Stick the word Gucci on a $50 handbag, and it’s suddenly worth $1,400. A few dollars’ worth of fabric transforms into a $250 pair of jeans if you slap a Citizens of Humanity label on it.

Or take Francisco de Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington, painted between 1812 and 1814. It’s not a large painting by any means—just a little more than two feet high. It’s not particularly bright or daring or (some would even say) good.

But it is a portrait of one of Britain’s greatest military heroes, painted by one of Spain’s greatest masters. Put those two names together—Wellington and Goya—and you get a painting that, to Britain’s National Portrait Gallery at least, is worth £140,000 in 1961. (That’d be about $4 million today.)

Neighborhood agitator Kempton Bunton certainly doesn’t understand the fuss. After all, Napoleon’s army was defeated by Wellington’s soldiers, not Wellington himself. It’d be nice (Kempton grumbles) if we’d all remember that once in a while. Britain, he believes, should spend its money solving other problems, not purchasing paintings of long-dead generals.

Look at Britain’s television licensing system, for instance. The United Kingdom helps fund the vaunted BBC through those fees. But Kempton believes it’s an unfair tax on the poor and elderly who can’t afford the fee and want—nay, need —to watch a little BBC.

He’ll tell you all about the evils of licensing fees if you ask. Perhaps if you don’t. Indeed, Kempton has opinions on nearly everything , and he never minds sharing them—much to the annoyance of his wife, Dorothy.

“I’m betting ya’,” she says. “Stop all your agitation.”

But with so many agitating issues, how can he stop? For instance, why would the government throw away £140,000 on a middling portrait of Wellington when it could’ve easily used that money to buy TV licenses to its poor and downtrodden citizenry? That’s what Kempton would like to know.

Still, Kempton loves his wife. He knows that perhaps it’s time for him to settle into a normal job, live a normal life and act like a normal sheep. Er, citizen . If Dorothy gives him one last chance to speak truth to power, he promises he’ll be good and quiet for the rest of his days.

But to speak truth to power, he’ll need to go to the country’s power source: London. For two days.

The Duke’s in London too, of course: The painting’s behind the walls of the National Portrait Gallery there, safe and secure.

Be a crying shame if the painting went missing , wouldn’t it? And if it was held for ransom … well, that’d be terrible, too. But the ransom amount sure might pay for a lot of television license fees.

Positive Elements

Kempton Bunton is obviously no ordinary art thief. While most criminals would find a way to use the painting to feather their own ill-gotten nests, Kempton is looking out for the little guy.

“All my life I’ve looked out for other people and gotten into trouble for it,” he admits later in court, and we see evidence of that. After he gets a nice, steady job at a bread factory, he loses it in a matter of days for standing up for a fellow worker who’s facing racial discrimination.

He explains that we are, in a way, each other—wholly interdependent upon one another to survive and thrive. He thinks of individuals as bricks: Alone, they’re not worth much. But together, they’re powerful and useful. And when someone’s disenfranchised (as he believes is happening with television license fees), it hurts the whole society.

But for all of Kempton’s noble, off-kilter activism, it’s his relationship with his family that strikes the deepest chord. While Dorothy sighs at and bickers with her husband, his devotion to her is unquestioned. Kempton loves his sons, too, and he makes a very brave (and questionable) move to protect his youngest from a poor decision.

One more thing: When it appears that Kempton just might get caught, the man does what (given the circumstances) seems at least a semi-honorable thing: He takes the painting, marches into the National Portrait Gallery and gives it back, knowing full well that it’ll likely mean significant jail time.

Spiritual Elements

Kempton isn’t particularly religious. He says that when he was in a bind as a teen—pulled out by a riptide to what could’ve been his doom—he had faith that he’d be saved. Not faith in God, but faith in people.

That said, he makes plenty of religious references. Some seem to be sincere. When he asks his barrister what a Latin phrase inscribed above the bench means, he’s told it reads, “Lord direct us.” “‘Lord help us,’ more like it,” he says.

Others are more flippant. The thief says that “not even God was standing by” the painting when it was nicked. And when Kempton tries to figure out what to do with the stolen painting, he tells son Jackie that they could really use Christ right now.

“How come?” Jackie asks.

“Carpenter,” Kempton says. “Someone who knows how to put a false back on that wardrobe.”

Kempton also fashions himself as a playwright, and he’s sent several off to the BBC for consideration. His latest ponders what “if Jesus had been born a woman.” He calls it The Adventures of Susan Christ. (“Not my cup of tea, then,” a woman tells him once she learns the title.) We hear references to punching the Pope.

Sexual Content

The Bunton’s eldest son, Kenny, comes back to stay for a few days, hoping that his girlfriend, Pammy, can stay with him. Dorothy is particularly set against it, especially that she’s not even officially divorced and doesn’t want her son “living in sin” under their roof. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s in the family way,” Dorothy sniffs. Kempton agrees, but the parents apparently relent: Later, we see Kenny and Pammy have sex while standing (fully clothed) in the spare bedroom. Pammy smokes a cigarette casually, leaning against a big wardrobe, while Kenny sweats and moans and moves. We later see Kenny with his pants unbuttoned.

Jackie and his girlfriend kiss and make out. A policeman leers at a woman’s rear, mentioning it to a coworker. When the other officer reminds the first that he’s married, the leering cop says, “I can look at the menu as long as I dine at home.” We see one or two uncovered breasts in pictures. Kempton tells the court that he was not named for the Kempton Park Racecourse, but he was likely conceived there.

Violent Content

Dorothy and Kempton’s daughter was apparently killed when her bicycle crashed. We don’t see the accident, but the 18-year-old’s death is a lingering wound for both parents—and a wound in their relationship. People talk about the death penalty (and argue whether people are “hanged” or “hung”). We hear that Kempton’s dad returned from World War I in a wheelchair after a tank ran over his legs.

Crude or Profane Language

Seven f-words, four s-words and a Jackson Pollack canvas of other profanities, including “a–,” “b–tard,” “h—,” “p-ss” and the British vulgarities “bloody and “b–locks.” God’s name is misused three times, while Jesus’ name is abused five times. We hear some crude terms for various body parts (and people compared to said body parts).

Drug and Alcohol Content

Kempton smokes a pipe, and several characters smoke cigarettes. Members of the Bunton family go to a pub to drink beer and other beverages. Kenny and Jackie drink beer elsewhere. Kempton jokes with his solicitors about giving him a gin and tonic. In a clip from James Bond’s Dr. No , the titular villain serves James his standard vodka martini.

Other Negative Elements

The movie revolves around a crime, obviously—the theft of a very valuable painting, which is treated as something of a lark. (Indeed, Kempton’s solicitor argues that Kempton wasn’t stealing at all, but rather borrowing the painting for a greater good.)

Both of Kempton’s sons have apparently some experience on the other side of the law, as well. Kenny’s back in town because he’s in trouble elsewhere. He invites little brother Jackie to drive a getaway car for another job, but Jackie turns him down, saying it’s not right. Kenny chides him, given that Jackie’s done that sort of thing before.

A crime of this sort naturally involves quite a bit of lying and hiding of the truth, too—but this film includes more lying than most of this ilk. Kempton’s the biggest liar, it would seem. Not only does he lie regarding the painting—keeping the truth from Dorothy as long as he can—but he lies in other ways. When he loses his job, for instance, he pretends he still has one for a couple of days (going so far as to buy a meat pie of the sort that Dorothy asked him to bring home from work). He seems to lie about where he’s going and what he’s doing as well. Meanwhile, Dorothy knows that Kempton’s being rather secretive, so she snoops through all of her husband’s personal belongings.

One of Kempton’s employers treats his minority employees with disrespect. [ Spoiler Warning ] Pammy, Kenny’s girlfriend, discovers the portrait of the Duke and tries to blackmail Kempton with the information.

As the British police try to find who stole their valuable painting, a criminal profile describes the likely culprit as a “Don Quixote,” someone who tilts at the windmills of injustice—even if the tilt itself is hopeless and those injustices are themselves a bit questionable.

The description nails Kempton. He’d compare himself more to Robin Hood than the deranged Don Quixote, of course, but he realizes his crusades come with a whiff of the quixotic. His fight against those television licensing fees is a great example. Rather than pay the fee (which, again, is levied on all British television sets, ostensibly to pay for the otherwise free BBC), Kempton ripped out the part of his TV that received the BBC. Britain’s television police were unmoved: They sent him to jail for 13 days for noncompliance. But it was hard time Kempton was willing to do for his principles.

Principles, schminciples , says Dorothy. She just wants a nice, normal family. In fact, as Kempton was ripping out the innards of his telly, Dorothy was paying the licensing fee. The result? A licensed TV incapable of broadcasting the very thing being licensed.

The Duke gives us something of a cinematic paradox as well.

The film, starring Oscar winners Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren, is gentle and funny and ever-so British. It might’ve felt like a grand fit on 1960s BBC itself—if not for all the needless profanity and an unnecessarily tawdry sex scene. The film offers a lot of nice messages about family and doing the right thing—using the backdrop of one of Britain’s most famous heists.

Oh, yes. The Duke is indeed based on a true story. And indeed, many believed Kempton was more like Robin Hood or Don Quixote than a hardboiled crook. Fair enough. But perhaps we shouldn’t lose sight that wrongs, not rights, are what the story’s built on. And the film—as entertaining as it can be—goes wrong in some ways itself.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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The Duke of Marylebone

Rupert Siskin, a humble food taster from London, becomes an everyday villain to impress the woman he loves, Lisa. He eventually gets into politics to become a perfect thief. Rupert Siskin, a humble food taster from London, becomes an everyday villain to impress the woman he loves, Lisa. He eventually gets into politics to become a perfect thief. Rupert Siskin, a humble food taster from London, becomes an everyday villain to impress the woman he loves, Lisa. He eventually gets into politics to become a perfect thief.

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• How long will The Duke of Marylebone be? Powered by Alexa
• July 14, 2024 (United States)
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Elisabeth Moss Stuns in FX’s Fascinating Spy Thriller ‘The Veil’: TV Review

By Aramide Tinubu

Aramide Tinubu

• Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly Keep Overly Elaborate Sci-Fi Thriller ‘Dark Matter’ From Collapsing in on Itself: TV Review 6 hours ago
• Ncuti Gatwa Delights in Disney+’s Audacious and Adventurous ‘Doctor Who’: TV Review 2 days ago
• Elisabeth Moss Stuns in FX’s Fascinating Spy Thriller ‘The Veil’: TV Review 1 week ago

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Armed with a mostly believable English accent, Moss is exceptional. Imogen is the persona her character now inhabits. Yet in hauntingly quiet moments when the secret agent is alone, the shadows of her true self and anguish-tinged fragments of her past briefly make themselves known. Despite her profession and personal experiences, Imogen never comes off robotic and unfeeling, a testament to Moss’ mastery of the character. Driven by her desire to understand Adilah, Imogen never stops searching for her humanity in the face of her perceived egregious transgressions.

Despite the comedic scenes involving gripes about France’s 35-hour workweek, the CIA’s often overblown reactions to any new revelations and a tech guy with putrid body odor, “The Veil” is no comedy. Stuck together in a tenuous truce and deeply skeptical of each other, Imogen and Adilah slowly reveal the shocking pieces of their different lives. These mirroring paths make them more similar than not, although they might be reluctant to admit it. Episode 5, “Grandfather’s House,” concludes with a breathtaking confrontation between the two women. It showcases how individual experiences and perceptions contribute to our interpretation of what’s true and possible.

The six episodes of “The Veil” are flawlessly paced and thoughtfully executed. Elegantly placed clues gradually shed light on Adilah and Imogen’s past lives, which are fully exposed in the final hour. In the end, the show is a reminder that though we may be taught to navigate life in black and white, our choices are frequently born somewhere in the gray.

The first two episodes of FX’s “The Veil” premiere April 30 on Hulu  with new episodes dropping weekly on Tuesdays.

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Bon Jovi docuseries 'Thank You, Goodnight' is an argument for respect

Eric Deggans

Jon Bon Jovi at the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Conn., in 2013. David Bergman/Hulu hide caption

Jon Bon Jovi at the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Conn., in 2013.

Hulu's docuseries Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story , spends a lot of time building up the Bon Jovi legend — exploring the band's almost unbelievable 40-plus-year run from playing hardscrabble rock clubs in New Jersey to earning platinum albums and entry into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

But what moved me most in the four-part series was something more revealing: its close look at the struggle by lead singer Jon Bon Jovi to overcome vocal problems which nearly led him to quit the band.

Footage of the singer croaking through vocal exercises, undergoing laser treatments, enduring acupuncture and finally turning to surgery is sprinkled throughout the series, which toggles back and forth between his problems in 2022 and a chronological story of the band's triumphs and tragedies from its earliest days.

Refusing to be Fat Elvis

Jon Bon Jovi was interviewed for Thank You, Goodnight . Disney/Hulu hide caption

Jon Bon Jovi was interviewed for Thank You, Goodnight .

Through it all, a question hangs: Will Bon Jovi ever recover enough vocal strength to lead a 40th anniversary tour?

"If I can't be the very best I can be, I'm out," he tells the cameras, still looking a bit boyish despite his voluminous gray hair at age 62. "I'm not here to drag down the legacy, I'm not here for the 'Where are they now?' tour ... I'm not ever gonna be the Fat Elvis ... That ain't happening."

Filmmaker Gotham Chopra — who has also directed docuseries about his father, spiritualist Deepak Chopra, and star quarterback Tom Brady — digs deeply into the band's history, aided by boatloads of pictures, video footage and early recordings provided by the group.

Former Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora in Thank You, Goodnight Disney/Hulu hide caption

Former Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora in Thank You, Goodnight

Chopra gets folks from the group's tight inner circle to speak up, including former manager Doc McGhee and guitarist Richie Sambora, who quit the band in 2013. ("Are we telling the truth, or are we going to lie, what are we going to do?" Sambora cracks to his offscreen interviewer. "Let's figure it out.")

But anyone expecting gossipy dish will walk away disappointed. Even major scandals in the band's history are handled with care, including the firing of founding bassist Alec John Such in 1994 (and the admission that his replacement, Hugh McDonald, already had been secretly playing bass parts on their albums for years), drummer Tico Torres' stint in addiction treatment and Sambora's decision to quit midway through a tour in 2013, with no notice to bandmates he had performed alongside for 30 years.

Alec John Such, a founding member of Bon Jovi, dies at 70

Sambora's explanation: When issues with substance use and family problems led him to miss recording sessions, Bon Jovi got producer John Shanks to play more guitar on their 2013 record What About Now . And Sambora was hurt.

"[Bon Jovi] had the whole thing kinda planned out," Sambora says, "which basically was telling me, um, 'I can do it without you.'"

Building a band on rock anthems

Jon Bon Jovi with guitarist Phil X. Disney/Hulu hide caption

Jon Bon Jovi with guitarist Phil X.

The docuseries shows how young New Jersey native John Bongiovi turned a job as a gofer at legendary recording studio The Power Station – owned by a cousin — into a recording of his first hit in the early 1980s, Runaway . His song eventually caught the ear of another little-known artist from New Jersey called Bruce Springsteen.

"The first demo I got of Jon's was a good song," says Springsteen, a longtime friend of Bon Jovi. "I mean, Jon's great talent is these big, powerful pop rock choruses that just demand to be sung by, you know, 20,000 people in an arena."

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Rock star jon bon jovi comes full 'circle'.

Thank You, Goodnight shows the band really took off by honing those rock anthems with songwriter Desmond Child, while simultaneously developing videos that showcased their status as a fun, rollicking live band. Hits like You Give Love a Bad Name, Livin' on a Prayer and Wanted: Dead or Alive made them MTV darlings and rock superstars.

Through it all, the singer and bandleader is shown as the group's visionary and spark plug, open about how strategically he pushed the band to write hit songs and positioned them for commercial success.

"It wasn't as though I woke up one morning and was the best singer in the school, or on the block, or in my house," he tells the camera, laughing. "I just had a desire and a work ethic that was always the driving force."

I saw that dynamic up close in the mid-1990s when I worked as a music critic in New Jersey, spending time with Jon Bon Jovi and the band. Back then, his mother ran the group's fan club and was always trying to convince the local rock critic to write about her superstar son – I was fascinated by how the band shrugged off criticisms of being uncool and survived changing musical trends, led by a frontman who worked hard to stay grounded.

Bon Jovi was always gracious and willing to talk; he even introduced me to then-New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman at one of his legendary Christmas charity concerts. (And in a crazy coincidence, the band's backup singer Everett Bradley is an old friend from college.)

I think the docuseries captures Bon Jovi's skill at leading the group through challenges musical and otherwise — from metal's slow fade off the pop charts to the rise of grunge rock — something the singer rarely gets credit for achieving.

Still, much of Thank You, Goodnight feels like an extended celebration of the band and its charismatic frontman, leavened by his earnest effort to regain control of his voice. If you're not a Bon Jovi fan, four episodes of this story may feel like a bit much (I'd recommend at least watching the first and last episodes.)

More than anything, the docuseries feels like an extended argument for something Bon Jovi has struggled to achieve, even amid million selling records and top-grossing concert tours – respect as a legendary rock band.

The audio and digital versions of this story were edited by Jennifer Vanasco .

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Movie Review: In ‘The Idea of You,’ a boy band is center stage but Anne Hathaway steals the show

This image released by Prime shows Nicholas Galitzine, left, and Anne Hathaway in a scene from “The Idea of You.” (Prime via AP)

This image released by Prime shows Ella Rubin, left, and Anne Hathaway in a scene from “The Idea of You.” (Prime via AP)

This image released by Prime shows Nicholas Galitzine in a scene from “The Idea of You.” (Prime via AP)

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In the warmly charming rom-com “The Idea of You,” Anne Hathaway plays a 40-year-old divorcee and Silver Lake art gallery owner who, after taking her teenage daughter to Coachella, becomes romantically involved with a 24-year-old heartthrob in the boy band August Moon. They first meet after she mistakes his trailer for the bathroom.

There are a few hundred things about this premise that might be farfetched, including the odds of finding love anywhere near the porta johns of a music festival. But one of them is not that a young star like Hayes Campbell ( Nicholas Galitzine ) would fall for a single mom like Solène (Hathaway).

Solène is stylish, unimpressed by Hayes’ celebrity and has bangs so perfect they look genetically modified. And, most importantly, she’s Anne Hathaway. In the power dynamics of “The Idea of You,” Hayes may be a fictional pop star but Hathaway is a very real movie star. And you don’t forget it for a moment in Michael Showalter’s lightly appealing showcase of the actor at her resplendent best.

“The Idea of You,” which debuts Thursday on Prime Video, is full of all the kinds of contradictions that can make a rom-com work. The highly glamorous, megawatt-smiling Hathaway is playing a down-to-earth nobody. The showbiz veteran in the movie is played by Galitzine, a less well-known but up-and-coming British actor whose performance in the movie is quite authentic. And even though the whole scenario is undeniably a glossy high-concept Hollywood fairy tale, Showalter gives it enough texture that “The Idea of You” comes off more natural and sincere than you’d expect.

The only thing that really needs to make perfect sense in a movie like “The Idea of You” is the chemistry. The film, penned by Showalter and Jennifer Westfeldt from Robinne Lee’s bestseller, takes its time in the early scenes between Solène and Hayes — first at Coachella, then when he stops by her gallery — allowing their rapport to build convincingly, and giving each actor plenty of time to smolder.

Once the steamy hotel-room encounters come in “The Idea of You,” the movie has, if not swept you away, then at least ushered you along on a European trip of sex and room service. At the same time, it stays faithful to its central mission of celebrating middle-aged womanhood. The relationship will eventually cause a social media firestorm, but its main pressure point is whether Solène can stick with Hayes after her ex-husband ( Reid Scott ) cheated on her. This is a fairy tale she deserves.

While Showalter ( “The Big Sick” ) has long showed a great gift for juggling comedy and drama at once, “The Idea of You” leans more fully into wish-fulfillment romance. That can leave less to sustain the film, which has notably neutered some of the things that distinguished the book.

The May-December romance has been shrunk a little. In the book, the singer is 20. Given that Galitzine is 29 and the 41-year-old Hathaway is no one’s idea of old, this is more like a July-September relationship. In the book, the daughter (Ella Rubin) is a huge admirer of the pop singer, adding to the awkwardness, but in the movie, August Moon is “so 7th grade” to her.

There are surely more interesting and funnier places “The Idea of You” could have gone. But Hathaway and Galitzine are a good enough match that, for a couple hours, it’s easy to forget.

But the most convincing thing about “The Idea of You”? August Moon. The movie nails the look and sound of boy bands so well because it went straight to the source. The original songs in the film are by Savan Kotecha and Carl Falk, the producer-songwriters of, among other pop hits, “What Makes You Beautiful,” One Direction’s debut single.

That connection will probably only further the sense that “The Idea of You” is very nearly “The Idea of Harry Styles.” The filmmakers have distanced the movie from any real-life resemblances. But one thing is for sure: With August Moon following 4(asterisk)Town of “Turning Red” (whose songs were penned by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell ), we are living in the golden age of the fictional boy band.

“The Idea of You,” an Amazon MGM Studios release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for some language and sexual content. Running time: 115 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

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‘The Fall Guy’ Review: Ryan Gosling Goes Pow! Splat! Ouch!

The actor charms as a swaggering stunt man, alongside an underused Emily Blunt, in the latest skull-rattling action movie from David Leitch.

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‘The Fall Guy’ | Anatomy of a Scene

The director david leitch narrates a sequence from his film featuring ryan gosling and emily blunt..

“Hi, I’m David Leitch. And I’m the director of ‘The Fall Guy.’ So I’m super excited. This is one of my favorite scenes in the movie. It’s like our setup. You see Ryan and Emily in a flashback where they are flirting.” “Oh, I was going to go for a spicy margarita after work. And I was wondering if you drink spicy margaritas?” [LAUGHS] “Well, just to keep it professional, I can only have one spicy margarita because if I have two, I start making bad decisions.” “This scene is all shot as a oner. It’s no cuts. So it was really a challenge for what’s going to come next. Ryan is having to play this charming, charismatic guy, knowing that we’re going to actually hook him to a 120-foot descender. A descender is a rig where we drop someone off a building or whatever. And the mechanism below actually decels him for the last 10 feet. That’s the actual stunt team right there. Keir Beck is hooking him in right now with the other Australian rigging team. And they’re getting ready to put Ryan over the edge.” “After this, you and I could both be on a beach somewhere in swimming costumes, drinking spicy margaritas.” “As a stunt person, this is not unusual. You would be having a conversation right up to the time you’re doing the stunt, finding the time to center yourself as they hang you over. It’s pretty amazing that he’s keeping his composure. We actually did this practically. This is all real. And this is in a building in Sydney. It took us about four months to get the permits to build the truss we needed to do, and get all the engineering and safety requirements out of the way. And this might be take two. But Ryan was such a good sport. I know he knew at some point, it’s called ‘The Fall Guy,’ he knew he was going to have to do something like this. So there he goes.” “Action! Action! Action! Action!” [WHIRRING]

By Manohla Dargis

Like a certain energized bunny, Ryan Gosling’s charmer in “The Fall Guy” just keeps going as he runs and leaps, tumbles and punches and vaults through the air like a rocket. The actor has shed his “Barbie” pretty-in-pink look, if not his signature heat-seeking moves to play Colt Seavers, a stuntman with a long résumé, six-packs on his six-packs and a disregard for personal safety. Plunging 12 stories in a building atrium, though, is just another bruising day on the job for Colt until, oops, he nearly goes splat.

Directed by David Leitch, “The Fall Guy” is divertingly slick, playful nonsense about a guy who lives to get brutalized again and again — soon after it starts, Colt suffers his catastrophic accident — which may be a metaphor for contemporary masculinity and its discontents, though perhaps not. More unambiguously, the movie is a feature-length stunt-highlight reel that’s been padded with romance, a minor mystery, winking jokes and the kind of unembarrassed self-regard for moviemaking that film people have indulged in for nearly as long as cinema has been in existence. For once, this swaggering pretense is largely justified.

There’s a story, though it’s largely irrelevant given that the movie is essentially a vehicle for Gosling and a lot of stunt performers to strut their cool stuff. Written by Drew Pearce and based (marginally) on the 1980s TV series of the same title starring Lee Majors, it opens shortly before Colt’s 12-story plunge goes wrong. After some restorative time alone baring his torso, he resumes stunt work, drawn by the promise of a reunion with his ex, Jody (a welcome if underused Emily Blunt). She’s directing a science-fiction blowout that looks like the typical big-screen recycling bin, with bits from generic video games, the 2011 fantasy “ Cowboys & Aliens ,” and both the “Alien” and “Mad Max” franchises. Cue the flirting and the fighting.

Leitch is a former stunt performer who has his own estimable résumé, which includes doubling for Brad Pitt, whom he later directed in “ Bullet Train .” Leitch has a company with Chad Stahelski, yet another former stunt performer turned movie director who’s is best known for the “John Wick” series with Keanu Reeves. Working in tandem with physically expressive performers like Pitt, Reeves and Charlize Theron (Leitch directed “ Atomic Blonde ”), the two filmmakers have, in the post-John Woo era, put a distinctive stamp on American action cinema with a mix of martial-arts styles, witty fight choreography and, especially, a focus on the many ways a human body can move (or hurtle) through space.

There are arsenals of guns and all manner of sharp objects that do gruesome damage in Leitch’s movies, “The Fall Guy” included. Yet what seizes your attention here, and in other Leitch and Stahelski productions, is the intense physicality of the action sequences, with their coordinated twisting, wrenching and straining bodies. A signature of both directors is that they emphasize the intense effort that goes into these physical acts, which is understandable given their backgrounds. (Like Fred Astaire, they show off the body, head to toe.) In their movies, you hear the panting and see the grimacing as fists and feet and whatever else happens to be around (a fridge door, a briefcase, a bottle) connect with soft tissue and hard heads.

Like the impressively flamboyant practical effects in “The Fall Guy,” this focus on the body reads like a rebuke to the digital wizardry that now characterizes action movies. Each time Colt crashes to the ground in “The Fall Guy,” the moment announces his and the movie’s authenticity (however you want to define that). There’s a macho undertow to this — real men, real stunts — which dovetails with how his romance with Jody is, by turns, comically, sentimentally and, at times, irritatingly framed, including via split-screen mirroring à la “ Pillow Talk .” Jody may be Colt’s boss, but he’s the one who has to save the day after some gnarly business with a star and producer (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Hannah Waddingham).

The issue of authenticity is a thread that the story jokingly pulls with a scene in which Colt’s face is digitally scanned and in a subplot involving a deep fake. (It’s funnier if you don’t think too hard about the fact that A.I. was an existentially fraught issue in the 2023 actors’ strike.) Tapping into his inner Tom Cruise, Gosling makes love to the camera and performs some of his own showstopping moves, at one point while atop and almost under a speeding garbage truck. Given that “The Fall Guy” is an ode to stunt work, it’s only right to note that the actor’s stunt doubles were Ben Jenkin and Justin Eaton, his driving double was Logan Holladay while his double on that nosebleed of a plummet was Troy Brown. Kudos, gentlemen.

The Fall Guy Rated PG-13 for falls, fights, crashes and explosions. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes. In theaters.

Manohla Dargis is the chief film critic for The Times. More about Manohla Dargis

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