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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.

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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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Helen Mirren and Jim Broadbent in The Duke (2020)

In 1961, Kempton Bunton, a 60 year old taxi driver, steals Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London. In 1961, Kempton Bunton, a 60 year old taxi driver, steals Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London. In 1961, Kempton Bunton, a 60 year old taxi driver, steals Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London.

Roger Michell
Richard Bean
Clive Coleman
Jim Broadbent
Heather Craney
Stephen Rashbrook
106 User reviews
107 Critic reviews
74 Metascore
6 nominations

Kempton Bunton

Debbie - Clerk of the Court

Judge Aarvold

Jeremy Hutchinson QC

Neddie Cussen
Woman with Babe

Post Office Clerk

PO Official 1

PO Official 2

Dorothy Bunton

Mrs Gowling

Jackie Bunton
Barry Spence

Sir Philip Hendy

Press Woman
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Trivia EON productions, who are the producers of the official James Bond film series are notoriously protective of their property and rarely give permission for clips to be used in other studio's movies for fear of the clips being misused or lampooned. In this case Dame Helen Mirren and director Roger Michell personally asked the Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson for permission to use the Scene from Dr No (1962) and promised the scene would be used in context and not adulterated in any way. A small fee was paid (which was donated to charity) and Broccoli and Wilson were allowed to view the finished film with the promise of that if they didn't like how the scene was used then it would be removed before release. Fortunately they had no complaints.
Goofs When visiting Kempton in his remand cell to discuss his ongoing court case, his QC leans on the "brick" cell wall, which clearly bends and rebounds, seemingly made of a rubberised material cast to resemble old painted brickwork.

Kempton Bunton : I'd just finished reading Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness and I felt a need to explore Sunderland.

Connections Featured in The Graham Norton Show: Adele/Helen Mirren/Jim Broadbent/Golda Rosheuvel/George Ezra (2022)
Soundtracks Shop Window Composed by Ivor Slaney Published by de Wolfe Music Licensed courtesy of de Wolfe Ltd

User reviews 106

Feb 12, 2022
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February 25, 2022 (United Kingdom)
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Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, UK
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Apr 24, 2022
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Runtime 1 hour 35 minutes

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

Grey-hair white woman wears red cardigan and glasses and stands beside balding man with glasses and black suit.

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.

Old man wears taupe trenchcoat and black hat holding megaphone on grey London street beside boy with 'free TV for the OAP' sign

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.

60-something year old white woman with grey hair and glasses wears 60s cleaning dress and vacuums hallway

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 Duke of Wellington painting from the Romantic period featuring a white man in regal red coat with gold adornments.

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.

White man and woman in their sixties wear trenchcoats, hats and glasses and look at camera in front of a curtain.

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’ Review: Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren Give Heart to a Very English Heist Comedy

Roger Michell's film tells a tall true story — about a working-class Englishman who stole a Goya from the National Gallery — with enjoyable bounce and a surprising political conscience.

By Guy Lodge

Film Critic

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If the improbably named Kempton Bunton hadn’t really lived, Ealing Studios would probably have written him into existence. A 60-year-old working-class Newcastle gent with a cheeky sense of humor and a cheerily rabble-rousing spirit, who just happened to be implicated in a headline-making London art heist, he was born to be the hero of a jaunty, crowd-pleasing British comedy caper. 44 years after his death, that has materialized in “ The Duke ,” and while the Ealing team might have made a more raucous farce out of it, Roger Michell ‘s film is a perfectly nimble, kind-hearted bit of teatime entertainment — ideally tailored to Jim Broadbent in one of his most appealing big-screen roles.

The pairing of Broadbent with Helen Mirren , warmly weary if a bit under-tested as Bunton’s salt-of-the-earth wife Dorothy, will make “The Duke” a major attraction to ill-served mature audiences when distributor Pathé opens the film in the U.K. (A full-scale theatrical release, whenever that seems feasible, would be fitting: Streaming platforms would risk cutting out a substantial portion of its built-in “gray pound” audience.) Outside its rainy native isles, meanwhile, “The Duke” should connect with a broad swath of viewers hungry for gently grown-up filmmaking. Warmly received at its Venice out-of-competition premiere, the film has a bit more commercial oomph than “Le Week-End,” Michell’s previous collaboration with Broadbent, but the two aren’t many lanes apart.

If it’s also easy to imagine Bunton’s story playing out as a Sunday-night BBC television drama, that observation might have tickled the man himself, given that it’s with the BBC that his skirmishes with the law began in the first place. We meet him in 1961, near retirement age but still hopping haphazardly between blue-collar jobs, living with the perennially exasperated Dorothy and his youngest son Jackie (Fionn Whitehead) in a cramped, peeling Newcastle row house. Its small, sepia-toned rooms are overcluttered with furniture and unarticulated grief: The Buntons’ eldest child Marian died as a teenager, and try as he might, Bunton hasn’t coaxed his wife to talk about the loss in 13 years.

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Getting by on a shoestring, they’re regularly pestered by collectors for their television licence fee — a tax paid to the public broadcaster from which Bunton insists he should be exempt, given that his TV doesn’t receive a BBC signal. The authorities are unpersuaded; cue a short prison spell. On his release, to the despair of his straight-and-narrow wife, he launches an impassioned one-man campaign to abolish the licence fee for senior citizens — even heading to London to lobby Parliament, with predictably glum results. The government and media care “more about art than charity,” he vents, sneering at the headline news of the day: the National Gallery’s £140,000 purchase of Goya’s painting “Portrait of the Duke of Wellington.”

How this passing frustration escalates into a startlingly simple theft of the painting in question is the neatest trick of a compact screenplay by first-time feature writers Richard Bean (the playwright behind Broadway hit “One Man, Two Guvnors”) and Clive Coleman. Where most heist films concentrate extensively on the planning of the job, “The Duke” blithely breaks this rule, depicting the theft itself as all but a throwaway whim, and milking rather more tension and comedy out of Bunton and Jackie’s shambolic attempts to conceal the booty from the oblivious Dorothy, as well as the eccentric legal proceedings that ensue when their plan goes awry. There’s method in this surprising order of things, though it’d undo a number of the film’s breezy, bittersweet pleasures to say much more.

In their interpretation of Bunton, the writers have updated the stock figure of the cuddly, bumbling English everyman with a streak of progressive activist spirit: He chides his wife for her compliance with conservative authorities, stands up for persecuted minorities at work, and drops Gandhi quotes and ahead-of-his-time slogans like “speak truth to power” into everyday conversation. Whether entirely true to the subject or otherwise, the film’s political-mindedness is bracing. The Tory party is jeeringly dismissed by Jackie in conversation, while Bunton’s self-described Robin Hood mission to hold the painting ransom — in return for funds he can redistribute to the needy — stops just short of quoting Labour Party’s contemporary “for the many, not the few” rhetoric.

If “The Duke” still lands closer to Richard Curtis than Ken Loach on the tonal spectrum, its quietly raised fist does cut through the more cloying notes of its cozy retro Englishness. Though it doesn’t skirt over the cruel prejudices of the era, the film still embraces a kind of tannin-stained midcentury nostalgia, where disparate classes unite in a rebellious, right-on courtroom singalong to “Jerusalem,” and an elderly couple repairs an argument with a kitchen dance to Gracie Fields’ “A Nice Cup of Tea.” Even Mike Eley’s attractively dusky lensing looks a bit like someone spilled a cup of the brown stuff over the lens and forgot to mop it up, while editor Kristina Hetherington’s spry, split-screen-reliant editing and George Fenton’s busy, brassy score also go heavy on throwback mannerisms.

If the filmmaking is occasionally a tad too cute, Broadbent and Mirren — two fine actors who can, under the wrong direction, lean into fussiness — do well to keep things restrained. Together, they convincingly play an unspoken, stiff-upper-lipped distance in their characters’ marriage that fills in some of the script’s gaps. Broadbent gives Bunton’s scrappy, upbeat spirit the right undertow of sorrow and been-to-the-brink desperation, and if a few too many of Mirren’s scenes simply require her to find fresh ways of tut-tutting, her gradual thaw to her husband’s cause is finely delineated and moving. “The Duke” is a romp first and foremost: Michell’s merry direction makes sure of that. But its stars put a small, dignified lump in its throat.

Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (noncompeting), Sept. 4, 2020. Running time: 95 MIN.

Production: (U.K.) A Pathé, Ingenious Media, Screen Yorkshire presentation of a Neon Films production. (International sales: Pathé International, Paris.) Producers: Nicky Bentham. Executive producers: Cameron McCracken, Jenny Borgars, Andrea Scarso, Hugo Heppell, Peter Scarf, Christopher Bunton. Co-producer: Michael Constable.
Crew: Director: Roger Michell. Screenplay: Richard Bean, Clive Coleman. Camera: Mike Eley. Editor: Kristina Hetherington. Music: George Fenton.
With: Jim Broadbent, Helen Mirren, Fionn Whitehead, Matthew Goode, Anna Maxwell Martin, Jack Bandeira, Aimée Kelly, Charlotte Spencer, Sian Clifford .

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‘the duke’: film review | venice 2020.

Jim Broadbent plays a thief with noble intentions and Helen Mirren his grief-hardened wife in 'The Duke,' Roger Michell’s account of a real-life art theft.

By Deborah Young

Deborah Young

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A funny-moving story enjoyably retold with classic British understatement and just the right twist at the end, The Duke is the account of an incredible true event from 1961, when a man from the working-class north of England climbed through a bathroom window into London’s National Gallery one night and stole a valuable painting of the Duke of Wellington by Francisco Goya. His motive was charity.

The fact that the perp is a lovable old head-in-the-clouds social reformer played by Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren is his brooding, resentful wife gives the incident, directed by Roger Michell of Notting Hill and My Cousin Rachel fame, a deeper satisfaction. Though television plays a key part of the plot and will no doubt be where The Duke finally comes to hang on the wall, Michell keeps the action theatrically fast-moving and the mood free. This out-of-comp Venice premiere is being released in UK cinemas in time for the BAFTA awards and could hit the spot for those who love a cheery English comedy with social overtones.

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‘The Duke’ Review: Suspect’s 61

This film from the director Roger Michell has a compelling art-thief protagonist, but is weighed down by soggy family drama.

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By Amy Nicholson

A Robin Hood figure polarizes England in “The Duke,” an ambling, sentimental account of the 1961 heist of Francisco de Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London. The police assume that the thief is a criminal mastermind. The public imagines the villain from Dr. No (1963) , who displayed the purloined painting in his lair. But the man standing trial is a more unusual suspect: a 61-year-old cabdriver, Kempton Bunton (Jim Broadbent), who claims that he swiped the art over frustration that the British government would rather spend money lionizing the dead than lifting up its working class. His ransom notes demand a charitable donation. (The real painting was returned in 1965 ; Bunton turned himself in.)

An anti-establishment autodidact with a quick stride and a fast mouth — “I feel about 23,” he says, and for a moment Broadbent’s gleaming eyes make you believe it — Bunton is a rabble-rouser and a compelling hero for this film by the director Roger Michell, who died in September after a career of humanist charmers including “Notting Hill” and “Venus.” It is a pity that Richard Bean and Clive Coleman’s script mires Bunton in a soggy family drama about an unresolved death; an elder son (Jack Bandeira) who flirts with crime; and a wife, Dorothy (Helen Mirren, so sheepish as to be near invisible), who is humiliated that her husband prefers prison to a stable home. These rather generic subplots diffuse the movie’s vibrant blue-collar crusade, which gets a boost from a tizzy jazz score. Thankfully, a barrister Jeremy Hutchinson (Matthew Goode) steps in to reward Bunton’s principles with a rousing defense. Though the climatic court battle feels a tad too inspirational, even Goya might admit that’s just what a flattering portrait does.

The Duke Rated R for swearing and a brief sexual scene. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In theaters.

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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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The Unexpected Sadness of “The Duke”

By Anthony Lane

Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren looking at the stolen painting in the film The Duke.

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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‘Some half-baked portrait by a Spanish drunk’ … Jim Broadbent in The Duke, shown at Venice film festival.

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.

Helen Mirren and Jim Broadbent, with the Duke of Wellington.

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.

Venice film festival 2020
Crime films
Jim Broadbent
Francisco de Goya
Venice film festival
Period and historical films

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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.

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The Duke Review

25 Feb 2022

Sadly and unwittingly, The Duke is British filmmaker Roger Michell ’s swan song . It’s almost as if he planned it. His final fictional feature (a documentary on the Queen, Elizabeth , is still to be posthumously released) seems, on reflection, like the perfect confluence of his versatile talents: mingling his knack for crowd-pleasing joy (see also: Notting Hill ), eccentric British humour ( Venus ), and tense dramatic stakes ( Enduring Love ) in one charming story.

And what a (true) story! In the rich 200-year history of the National Gallery, only one painting has ever been stolen, and the man (supposedly) responsible was a disabled pension-age bus driver from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. This is Ocean’s 11 by way of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet . In fact, Richard Bean and Clive Coleman’s script has some of the wit and sparkle you’d find in a Dick Clement / Ian La Frenais project: a working-class hero encountering insurmountable odds and finding absurdity alongside them.

In Jim Broadbent ’s Kempton, you find that hero: a Geordie George Clooney possessing a gift for the gab, a penchant for tea and biscuits, and a heart stubbornly fixed on doing the right thing, even if it lacks a sense of self-preservation. Broadbent is stupendously well-cast, his everyman features a good fit for the role, and he’s given free rein to be far more gregarious and charismatic than normally allowed. Helen Mirren is very good too, though it’s hard to shake the feeling this role is rather beneath her talents; you don’t hire an Oscar-winner to play the ‘scolding-wife’ type.

Though it remains cosy to its core, there is a fearless social conscience to it.

Michell lightly leans into the genre, finding an amusing contrast between slick heist tropes (the opening titles are all ’60s-style jazz and split-screens) and Broadbent’s distinctly unglamorous criminal scheming. But — perhaps owing to how easy it was in real life — the actual heist itself takes up relatively little screen-time. The tension is more plainly found in whether the scheme will be uncovered, and if its high-minded motives will be a success.

As Kempton himself notes, he is a true Robin Hood-esque hero, merely looking to “borrow” the painting while holding the government (who spent £40,000 of public money to buy it) to ransom, so that the disabled and elderly might have a fairer share of the pot. Winningly, the film adopts some of Kempton’s principles too, and though it remains cosy to its core, there is a fearless social conscience to it that’s rare among Sunday-teatime types.

Fittingly, the film’s final act, in which Kempton offers his defence in court, is quite literally crowd-pleasing, Broadbent given the floor to deliver full-throated defences of our shared community spirit — a preacher from a humanist pulpit. Kempton’s words are gentle and jocular but fiercely rousing, and while the court establishment figures harrumph, the gallery cheers and hollers. In cinemas, this lovely little film ought to play equally well.

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‘The Duke’ Review: Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren Headline a Cozy and Very British Heist Affair

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2020 Venice Film Festival. Sony Pictures Classics releases the film in theaters on Friday, April 22.

“The Duke” is a very British heist movie, a true-crime caper with no guns, no car chases, toad in the hole for dinner, and Gracie Fields warbling a song called “A Nice Cup of Tea” on the soundtrack. It’s so British, in fact, that its central character is named Kempton Bunton, but at least he has the good grace to joke about it. The film’s director is Roger Michell , best known for “Notting Hill,” and who recently made the luvvie love-in documentary, “Tea with the Dames.” The cast boasts two of the UK’s national treasures, Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren. If you suspect “The Duke” is on the cozy and nostalgic side of the cinematic spectrum, you might be right.

But it’s such an expertly crafted and highly polished piece of warmhearted escapism that it’s difficult to resist. This is the kind of British film with international appeal: the venerable cast, genial tone, inspirational story, and mischievous English eccentricity are all present and correct. Settle in, preferably with a nice cup of tea to hand, and enjoy.

Set in 1961, “The Duke” tells the bizarre, stranger-than-fiction tale of the aforementioned Bunton, a splendid addition to Broadbent’s collection of endearing bumblers. Impressively understated and crotchety, Mirren goes full-dowdy as his long-suffering wife, Dolly, who scrubs floors for her posh but kindly boss (Anna Maxwell Martin) while 60-something Kempton gets fired from job after job for talking too much. His real passion is writing scripts to send to the BBC, even though he has a Snoopy-rivaling stack of rejection letters to show for it.

His latest work, “Susan Christ,” reimagines Jesus as a woman. He is also a political campaigner who believes that pensioners should have free television licenses (still a hot topic in British politics, five decades on). Television is the poor man’s cure for loneliness, he argues, but it could be that he just doesn’t fancy paying: this is a man barred from his local pub for pinching the toilet paper. What gives the film its edge is that Bunton is both a bumptious, selfish oddball, and someone who genuinely cares about injustice. He wants to help society at large, but he can be a nightmare for Dolly and their loyal son Jackie (Fionn Whitehead). Typically, it’s a very British combination.

When Bunton hears that the National Gallery has paid the colossal sum of £160,000 for a Goya portrait of the Duke of Wellington — a sum that might just about pay for the picture frame today — he decides to take the train from Newcastle to London, steal the painting, and spend the ransom on license fees for war veterans. The nonexistent security arrangements allow him to pull off the heist without a hitch, thus leading to lots of amusing, mildly satirical scenes where embarrassed police officials announce they are on the lookout for a highly trained, well-organized criminal gang — probably Italians. If the British establishment weren’t quite so snobbish and jingoistic, the film suggests, they might not have been so off the mark.

But don’t expect anything too hard-hitting. Michell announces in the opening minutes that he is going to have fun with the cracking premise. Bunton is first seen protesting his innocence in the dock of the Old Bailey before the action jumps back six months, and we get some snazzy split screens and swinging jazz. For all the smoky factory chimneys and the crumbling red-brick terraces, Michell isn’t going to wallow in the kitchen-sink gloom of the characters’ lives. The colors are rich, the clothing is comfy, and the screenplay by Richard Bean and Clive Coleman sparkles with wit, giving even the smallest characters (notably a foul-mouthed taxi-firm boss) their moment to shine. American audiences might need subtitles to help them decipher the local dialect, but, once they do, they will get more laughs than most films can offer.

“The Duke” doesn’t stumble until it starts to fall for Bunton’s own rhetoric. In the later scenes, he becomes not just a modern-day Robin Hood but an anti-racist champion and a utopian philosopher. The film also makes the tenuous, sentimental case that all of his crimes and misdemeanors are a reaction to the death of his teenage daughter a decade earlier. Viewers might be less sympathetic than the cheering crowd in the Old Bailey’s public gallery. Having put so much time and effort into presenting Bunton as a loudmouthed, troublemaking crank, there was no need for “The Duke” to claim that he was a saint, as well. Luckily, for most of this cheerful comedy, he is a loudmouthed, troublemaking crank, and all the more lovable for it.

“The Duke” premiered at the 2020 Venice Film Festival.

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With its cameos, musical numbers, and self-referential jokes, Unfrosted is so eager to please, yet not particularly pleasing.

Not all reviews have been negative. The Guardian branded Unfrosted 's goofiness as "entertaining," while Deadline labeled the movie "hilarious." Overall, though, the film's wafer-thin plot, its bombardment of well-known faces, and its failure to justify its own existence have alienated critics. Indeed, though Unfrosted has its fair share of funny lines, it's too messy to be enjoyable. Furthermore, fewer movies have felt as desperate to please an audience than Unfrosted , and its neediness grates throughout its 90-minute runtime. With its cameos, musical numbers, and self-referential jokes, Unfrosted is so eager to please, yet not particularly pleasing.

The criticisms of reviewers are mirrored by comments from audiences. One Rotten Tomatoes user called Unfrosted "truly dreadful," while another wittily compared the movie to a "big bowl of stale flakes." It's not often that critics and viewers are in agreement, but it seems Unfrosted' s lack of appeal has united both parties .

Unfrosted Probably Won't Have The One Advantage The Bee Movie Does

Jerry seinfeld might be hoping to be a meme again.

Bee Movie is a rare example of a film's negative reaction ultimately proving to have positive consequences. After all, in the years following its release, Bee Movie garnered popularity on the internet in the form of a meme, leading to interest in a possible Bee Movie 2 . Of course, the fresh interest in the film was tongue-in-cheek in nature, with Bee Movie essentially acting as the source of intense mockery. Nevertheless, if it weren't for the fact that it was turned into a meme, Bee Movie would've suffered a far worse fate: being forgotten about.

Despite its online popularity, Jerry Seinfeld has no plans to make a Bee Movie sequel.

The worst thing that can happen to a movie is that, following its release, it has little to no impact and fails to have any kind of legacy. Unfortunately for Jerry Seinfeld, that looks like it will be the case with Unfrosted . Time will tell whether the movie attracts the attention of internet users. However, Unfrosted has so far failed to provoke much conversation on social media . As such, it's likely that the movie will be forgotten about very soon.

Source: Rotten Tomatoes , Collider , MovieWeb , The Guardian , Deadline

Unfrosted (2024)

Director Jerry Seinfeld

Release Date May 3, 2024

Cast Daniel Levy, Sarah Cooper, Thomas Lennon, Jack McBrayer, Fred Armisen, James Marsden, Melissa McCarthy, Hugh Grant, Bill Burr, Adrian Martinez, Jim Gaffigan, amy schumer, Max Greenfield, Christian Slater, Bobby Moynihan, Jerry Seinfeld

Rating PG-13

Genres Biography, Comedy, History

Why Jerry Seinfeld's New Movie's Rotten Tomatoes Score Is Even Worse Than His 17-Year-Old Meme Disaster

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Ryan Gosling is 'The Fall Guy' in this cheerfully nonsensical stuntman thriller

Justin Chang

Ryan Gosling is Colt Seavers in The Fall Guy. Universal Pictures hide caption

Ryan Gosling is Colt Seavers in The Fall Guy.

From the 1933 action film Lucky Devils to the 1980 comedy-thriller The Stunt Man to Quentin Tarantino 's Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood , filmmakers have long delighted in turning the camera on stunt performers, those professional daredevils who risk life and limb to make action scenes look convincing.

It's a hard, often thankless job, which is why for years people have lobbied the motion picture academy to present an Oscar for stunt work. And of course, it's a dangerous job: Just last month, while shooting the Eddie Murphy movie The Pickup , several crew members were injured during a stunt involving two rolling cars.

There's a lot of vehicular mayhem in the noisily diverting new action-comedy The Fall Guy , a feature-length reboot of the '80s TV series. Ryan Gosling stars as a highly skilled stunt performer named Colt Seavers, who, despite his cynical film-noir-style voiceover, genuinely loves his job.

Colt loves movies and moviemaking, loves hurling himself off balconies and strapping himself into soon-to-be-totaled automobiles. Most of all, he loves Jody Moreno, an up-and-coming assistant director played by Emily Blunt , and she loves him right back.

Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt star in The Fall Guy. Universal Pictures hide caption

Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt star in The Fall Guy.

Colt works mainly as a stunt double for Tom Ryder, a world-famous movie star played by a preening Aaron Taylor-Johnson. But when Colt suffers a life-threatening injury on the set, he quits the biz in despair and ghosts Jody for more than a year while he recovers. But then he learns that Jody is directing a big-budget sci-fi movie in Sydney and wants him to be Tom's stunt double again. Upon arriving Down Under, however, Colt finds out that Jody did not ask for him and has no idea why he's here.

The reason for Colt's appearance on the set is one mystery in a cheerfully nonsensical thriller plot devised by the screenwriter Drew Pearce. There's also a body in a bathtub, an incriminating cell phone and several amusing side characters, including a busybody producer played by Hannah Waddingham of Ted Lasso fame.

Author Interviews

Hollywood 'stuntman' reveals tricks of trade.

Another key player is Colt's best friend and stunt coordinator, Dan, played by the always excellent Winston Duke . In one endearing running gag, Colt and Dan keep quoting dialogue from classic films like The Last of the Mohicans , The Fugitive and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, all of which The Fall Guy giddily tries to outdo in its sheer volume of death-defying mayhem.

Before long, Colt isn't just performing stunts. He's forced to put his well-honed survival skills to good use off the set, whether he's beating up thugs in a nightclub, punching villains in a helicopter or getting tossed around in the back of a speeding garbage truck. That's one of several set-pieces that the director David Leitch opted to shoot using practical techniques, rather than CGI — a decision that gives this stunt-centric movie an undeniable integrity.

The Two-Way

How'd they do that jean-claude van damme's 'epic split'.

The Fall Guy is undoubtedly a passion project for Leitch, who once worked as a stunt double for actors including Brad Pitt and Jean-Claude Van Damme. (He nods to this by giving Colt a handy canine companion named Jean-Claude.) Leitch can direct action beautifully, as he did in the Charlize Theron smash-'em-up Atomic Blonde . But he can also go too flamboyantly over-the-top, as in sloppier recent efforts like Bullet Train and Hobbs & Shaw . The Fall Guy is better than those two, but it would have been better still with cleaner action, tighter editing and a running time south of two hours.

Movie Interviews

'atomic blonde' director brings stuntman skills to his 'punk rock spy thriller'.

Blunt is such a good comedian and action star that it's a shame she doesn't get more to do in either department; Jody may be in the director's chair, but as a character, she's mainly a second banana. The Fall Guy is Gosling's picture. Unlike the brooding, taciturn stuntmen the actor played in Drive and The Place Beyond the Pines , Colt is a wonderfully expressive goofball. There's a moment here, after a fiery boat chase around Sydney Harbour, when Colt emerges triumphant from the water, clothes dripping and muscles bulging, while a euphoric cover of Kiss' "I Was Made for Lovin' You" surges for the umpteenth time on the soundtrack. It's ridiculous and gloriously overwrought — and like the best-executed stunts, it comes perilously close to movie magic.

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Summer Movie Calendar 2024

A month-by-month breakdown of the best summer movies 2024 has to offer, from furiosa and deadpool & wolverine to maxxxine , alien: romulus , and more..

TAGGED AS: blockbusters , movies , Summer

Images from Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Despicable Me 4, Deadpool & Wolverine, A Quiet Place: Day One, and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

(Photo by ©Warner Bros., ©Universal Pictures, ©20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios, ©Paramount Pictures, ©Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

It’s that time of year once again, when school is out (or is about to be), the weather is getting warmer, and we’re all just looking for a bit of adventure, romance, comedy, or gleeful terror to entertain us. Enter the summer movie season, when studios big and small roll out their biggest crowd-pleasers and screen spectacles. As usual, we’ve got a lot to look forward to over the next few months, so to help you plan your schedule, here’s your handy month-by-month breakdown of the most notable movies hitting theaters and streaming services in Summer 2024.

The Idea of You (2024)

After directing The Big Sick , The Lovebirds , and Spoiler Alert , Michael Showalter brings us another unique look at love with this adaptation of a 2017 novel about a divorced single mom who takes her daughter to see a boy band at Coachella and ends up in a relationship with the group’s much younger frontman.

The Fall Guy (2024)

Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt kick off the summer movie season with this action-packed love letter to stunt performers, appropriately helmed by stuntman-turned-director David Leitch. Gosling plays a stuntman who gets roped into a risky mission when the actor he’s doubling for goes missing.

I Saw the TV Glow (2024)

Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine star in A24’s latest offering, a psychological thriller about a teen who becomes obsessed with a late-night TV show and, as a result, begins to feel the reality around him bending and cracking in unexpected ways.

Unfrosted (2024)

Jerry Seinfeld makes his directorial debut with this tongue-in-cheek “history” of the corporate rivalry between American cereal companies Kellogg’s and Post that ultimately resulted in the invention of the Pop-Tart. Seinfeld also wrote, produced, and stars in the film alongside a huge, star-studded ensemble cast.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)

Maze Runner director Wes Ball takes the helm for the latest entry in the rebooted Planet of the Apes franchise, this time set 300 years after the events of 2017’s War for the Planet of the Apes , when a young chimpanzee joins forces with a feral human girl to rebel against a tyrannical ape king.

Babes (2024)

Another notable directorial debut, Babes is the first feature from Better Things star Pamela Adlon. The film stars Ilana Glazer and Michelle Buteau as childhood best friends whose relationship is tested when one of them gets pregnant from a one-night stand and seeks help from the other, a married mother of two.

Back to Black (2024)

Industry star Marisa Abela takes on the role of Amy Winehouse in Sam Taylor-Johnson’s biopic of the late singer’s life, charting her rise to fame, the circumstances that led up to the creation of the film’s titular album, and her troubles thereafter.

Few summer movies can boast the kind of all-star cast that John Krasinski has put together to voice the various imaginary creatures in his live-action/animated hybrid movie IF , about a young girl who gains the ability to see imaginary friends and uses the power to reunite them with the adults who abandoned them.

The Strangers: Chapter 1 (2024)

The 2008 horror thriller The Strangers gets something of a reboot with this film, intended to be the first in a new trilogy, about a young couple on a road trip who stay at an isolated rental home, only to be terrorized by a trio of intruders in masks. All three movies in this new trilogy were filmed concurrently, so you can expect Chapters 2 and 3 to follow relatively soon.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)

George Miller returns to the world of his Oscar-winning action extravaganza Mad Max: Fury Road with this prequel that tells the story of Furiosa, the character played by Charlize Theron in the previous film and now portrayed by Anya Taylor-Joy.

The Garfield Movie (2024)

Garfield is back on the big screen, and this time the whole thing is animated, with Chris Pratt taking over as the voice of the orange cat who hates Mondays and loves lasagna. The story, as it were, finds Garfield and Odie (voiced by Harvey Guillen) meeting Garfield’s dad (Samuel L. Jackson) and embarking on a high-stakes adventure.

Robot Dreams (2023)

This Spanish animated treat actually debuted at Cannes last year, after which it was nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar earlier this year. It contains no dialogue, but follows the friendship between a lonely anthropomorphic dog and the robot he builds to keep him company.

Young Woman and the Sea (2024)

Daisy Ridley stars in this biopic chronicling the life and achievements of Gertrude Ederle, a New York City woman who won a gold medal at the 1924 Olympics and went on to become the first woman to swim across the English Channel.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024)

Detectives Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett are back on the case for a fourth go-round, this time to root out corruption in their own department after their captain (Joe Pantoliano) is posthumously accused of shady dealings and the two of them are set up.

Hit Man (2023)

In between lighting up the screen with Sydney Sweeney in Anyone but You and chasing tornados in Twister , Glen Powell stars in Richard Linklater’s comedy about an undercover police officer who poses as a hitman to capture people trying to secure his services, only to fall in love with one of them.

The Watchers (2024)

If the director’s name strikes a familiar nerve, that’s because she is, in fact, the daughter of M. Night Shyamalan, making her own feature directorial debut with this adaptation of the eponymous novel about a woman stranded in an Irish forest who stumbles upon a remote shelter where she meets other survivors who are trapped there, hunted by mysterious creatures in the night.

Inside Out 2 (2024)

Amy Poehler returns to voice Joy in this sequel to the Oscar-winning 2015 film about the anthropomorphized emotions swirling around inside a young girl named Riley. This time, Joy and the other emotions from the first film are supplanted by new emotions as Riley enters adolescence and must fight to regain control.

The Bikeriders (2023)

Director Jeff Nichols’ ( Mud , Loving ) latest film is inspired by the 1967 photo book of the same name and follows the relationships between the members of a fictional 1960s motorcycle club over the course of a decade as seen through the eyes of some of its key members.

Fancy Dance (2023)

Isabel DeRoy-Olson and Lily Gladstone in Fancy Dance

Release Date: June 21, 2024 (streaming June 28 on Apple TV+) Director: Erica Tremblay Starring: Lily Gladstone, Shea Whigham, Isabel DeRoy-Olson, Audrey Wasilewski

Recent Oscar-winner Lily Gladstone stars in Erica Tremblay’s narrative feature directorial debut as a Native American woman on the Seneca-Cayuga Nation Reservation who hits the road to find her missing sister with her niece before her own father attempts to take custody of her.

Kinds of Kindness (2024)

Hot off of their Oscar-winning collaboration on Poor Things , director Yorgos Lanthimos reunites with Emma Stone (and Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley) for at least part of this anthology film that tells three separate stories with a star-studded cast.

Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 (2024)

The first chapter of Kevin Costner’s epic, two-part Western hits theaters in June, telling a sprawling story about the expansion into the American West during the Civil War era.

A Quiet Place: Day One (2024)

Pig director Michael Sarnoski makes the leap to genre blockbuster with A Quiet Place: Day One , starring Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn in a prequel to John Krasinski’s hit 2018 thriller that depicts how one woman fought to survive the initial invasion of the aliens who hunt by sound.

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024)

More than three decades since we last saw Eddie Murphy’s Axel Foley on screen, he returns for another adventure — this time on Netflix — that sees the Detroit cop return to Los Angeles to team up with his daughter, her ex-boyfriend, and a few familiar faces to uncover a conspiracy.

Despicable Me 4 (2024)

Gru and Lucy are back, and this time, not only are they the proud parents of their adoptive daughters Margo, Edith, and Agnes, but they’ve also given birth to Gru Jr. As Gru learns to embrace this new chapter of his life, he and his family must also face off against an escaped criminal who’s out to get him.

MaXXXine (2024)

The third and final chapter of Ti West’s horror trilogy starring Mia Goth takes place in the 1980s, as the lone survivor of 2022’s X , Maxine, heads to Los Angeles to become an actress just as the infamous serial killer known as the Night Stalker is at the height of his rampage.

Fly Me to the Moon (2024)

Love, Simon director and longtime TV vet Greg Berlanti helms this romantic dramedy inspired by the 1960s Space Race. Channing Tatum plays the NASA director in charge of the Apollo 11 mission, who develops a relationship with the marketing guru (Scarlett Johansson) brought in to film a fake moon landing as a back-up in case things go sideways.

Longlegs (2024)

For those of you who have seen one or two of this film’s cryptic trailers and couldn’t make heads or tails of it, that’s likely intentional. The film stars Maika Monroe as an FBI agent on the trail of a serial killer (Nicolas Cage) in 1974 who uncovers evidence of occult involvement and a personal link to the killer himself.

Sing Sing (2023)

Inspired by a true story and a real rehabilitation program at the titular maximum security prison in New York, this drama centers on a group of inmates, including a wrongly convicted man, who find purpose in putting on their own stage production.

Twisters (2024)

Another director transitioning from small indie drama to explosive blockbuster is Lee Isaac Chung, the Oscar-nominated director of 2020’s Minari , who helms this sequel to the 1996 disaster thriller Twister . Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones, and Anthony Ramos star as three storm-chasers with vastly different personalities who unite under their shared passion and race to capture rare tornado events.

Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

Arguably the biggest movie of the summer, Deadpool & Wolverine follows up with the Merc with a Mouth as he is enlisted by the shadowy Time Variance Authority to recruit a certain mutant with adamantium claws to help protect the multiverse. Expect plenty of cheeky R-rated jokes and meta references to familiar franchises.

Cuckoo (2024)

Euphoria star Hunter Schafer stars in this psychological horror-thriller about a teen who moves to the German Alps with her father and his new family and discovers that her father’s new boss may not be exactly what he seems.

Harold and the Purple Crayon (2023)

In the midst of all the horror we have coming out in August, here’s a family film based on the popular 1955 children’s book of the same name. Zachary Levi stars as Harold, who emerges from his book and into the real world with his magical purple crayon, only for it to fall into the wrong hands, forcing Harold and his new friends to save the world.

The Instigators (2024)

(Photo by Apple TV+)

Release Date: August 2, 2024 (streaming August 9 on Apple TV+) Director: Doug Liman Starring: Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, Hong Chau, Paul Walter Hauser, Michael Stuhlbarg, Ving Rhames, Alfred Molina, Ron Perlman, Jack Harlow

Director Doug Liman wasn’t too happy about his last film, the Road House remake, skipping a theatrical release to head straight to Prime Video, so at least this one is getting a limited release before it hits Apple TV+. And look at that cast! Matt Damon and Casey Affleck lead an all-star ensemble in a heist thriller about a pair of thieves who hit the road with their therapist after a botched robbery attempt.

Borderlands (2024)

Fans were somewhat perplexed by some of the casting choices for Borderlands , based on the popular video game series of the same name, but the trailer seems to have alleviated some of those concerns. Maybe. We’ll just have to wait and see if director Eli Roth can deliver something that will appeal to both hardcore fans of the games, and newcomers who just want to have a raucous good time at the movies.

Trap (2024)

Not to be outdone by his own daughter, M. Night Shyamalan is also releasing a new film this year (co-starring another one of his daughters, Saleka). This one stars Josh Hartnett as a man who takes his young daughter to see a pop star in concert and learns the police have set an elaborate trap to capture a serial killer. He just happens to be the killer they’re looking for.

Alien: Romulus (2024)

Veteran horror director Fede Álvarez (2013’s Evil Dead , Don’t Breathe ) takes on the next installment of the Alien franchise, set between the events of Ridley Scott’s original 1979 film and James Cameron’s Aliens . The story centers on a scavenger crew who stumble upon a derelict space station and encounter, well, aliens. Familiar, yes, but here’s hoping the simplicity of the setup yields some creative thrills.

Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 2 (2024)

If you thought you’d have to wait a year or more to get the second chapter of Kevin Costner’s Horizon , you are in for a treat. Just about a month and a half after Chapter 1 hit theaters, we’re getting Chapter 2 , continuing the epic story of western expansion during the Civil War.

Blink Twice (2024)

Zoë Kravitz makes her directorial debut with this dark comedy-thriller (which she also co-wrote) about two cocktail waitresses (Naomi Ackie and Alia Shawkat) who are invited to an impromptu getaway on a private island owned by a wealthy tech mogul (Channing Tatum), where things slowly turn sinister.

The Crow (2024)

Alex Proyas’ 1994 adaptation of the comic book series The Crow is infamous for the on-set death of star Brandon Lee, son of Bruce Lee, during filming, so it has become something of a cult classic. Rupert Sanders and Bill Skarsgård hope to live up to that reputation with a new take on the story of a murdered man who comes back to life to exact revenge on his killers.

They Listen (2024)

We don’t know much yet about They Listen , except that it’s a Blumhouse horror film directed by Chris Weitz and starring John Cho, Katherine Waterston, and, hot off his acclaimed performance in Late Night with the Devil , David Dastmalchian. And frankly, that’s enough to keep us interested.

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IMAGES

The Duke (2020)
The Duke: Trailer 1
The Duke: Trailer 1
The Duke
The Duke: Trailer 1
The Duke (2021) movie cover

COMMENTS

The Duke
97% 146 Reviews Tomatometer 89% 250+ Ratings Audience Score In 1961, Kempton Bunton, a 60-year old taxi driver, stole Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London.
The Duke movie review & film summary (2022)
Advertisement. 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 ...
The Duke (2020)
The Duke: Directed by Roger Michell. With Jim Broadbent, Heather Craney, Stephen Rashbrook, James Wilby. In 1961, Kempton Bunton, a 60 year old taxi driver, steals Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London.
The Duke
Rated: 4/5 • Dec 8, 2002. In Theaters At Home TV Shows. Advertise With Us. A miserly Briton opposes his philanthropic uncle (John Neville), an American cousin (James Doohan) and the uncle's ...
The Duke review
Jim Broadbent stars as a pensioner who steals a Goya painting from the National Gallery in this charming and witty film by Roger Michell.
The Duke (2020 film)
The Duke is a 2020 British comedy drama film directed by Roger Michell, with a screenplay by Richard Bean and Clive Coleman.It is based on the true story of the 1961 theft of the Portrait of the Duke of Wellington.The film stars Jim Broadbent, Helen Mirren, Fionn Whitehead, Anna Maxwell Martin and Matthew Goode.It was Michell's penultimate film before his death on 22 September 2021.
The Duke brings British comedy charm and smarts to the true story of
The Duke stars Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren in a comedy about a crime that baffled a nation: the 1961 theft of a Goya painting from London's National Gallery — by a 60-year-old pensioner.
'The Duke' Review: A Very English Heist Comedy With Heart
'The Duke' Review: Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren Give Heart to a Very English Heist Comedy Roger Michell's film tells a tall true story — about a working-class Englishman who stole a Goya ...
'The Duke': Film Review
The fact that the perp is a lovable old head-in-the-clouds social reformer played by Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren is his brooding, resentful wife gives the incident, directed by Roger Michell of ...
'The Duke' Review: Suspect's 61
Thankfully, a barrister Jeremy Hutchinson (Matthew Goode) steps in to reward Bunton's principles with a rousing defense. Though the climatic court battle feels a tad too inspirational, even Goya ...
The Duke Review: Broadbent & Mirren Excel In Stylish, Heartwarming Dramedy
By Rachel Labonte. Published Apr 22, 2022. Though it lags slightly in the middle, The Duke is an overall delightful depiction of a remarkable true story led by heartwarming performances. 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 ...
The Duke review
The story of Bunton and the Duke's portrait is very unusual for a high-concept Britpic in that the true story has a ready-made two-part plot, revealing a mystery you didn't know was there.
The Duke Review
A delightfully British true-crime caper that's stranger-than-fiction. The Duke hits U.K. theaters on Feb. 25, 2022. Every good caper starts with an eccentric oddball, and The Duke is no ...
"The Duke" and "The Northman," Reviewed
Anthony Lane reviews "The Duke," the final feature from the late Roger Michell, which stars Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren and is based on an actual art theft in nineteen-sixties England, and ...
The Duke review
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 ...
The Duke movie review: expert handling on all sides makes this stranger
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 Duke Review
The Duke Review. 1961. Kempton Bunton (Jim Broadbent) lives a humble life in Newcastle with his wife Dorothy (Helen Mirren) and son Jackie (Fionn Whitehead). Their lives change forever when a ...
The Duke, review: Helen Mirren and Jim Broadbent shine in this zingy
The Duke, review: Helen Mirren and Jim Broadbent shine in this zingy Ealing-style caper The late Roger Michell's film about the real-life theft of a Goya masterpiece proves they do make 'em like ...
'The Duke' Review: Helen Mirren, Jim Broadbent Lead British ...
Editor's note: This review was originally published at the 2020 Venice Film Festival. Sony Pictures Classics releases the film in theaters on Friday, April 22. "The Duke" is a very British ...
The Duke (2021) Movie Reviews
In 1961, Kempton Bunton, a 60-year old taxi driver, stole Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London. It was the first (and remains the only) theft in the Gallery's history. ... The Duke (2021) Fan Reviews and Ratings Powered by Rotten Tomatoes Rate Movie. Close Audience Score. The percentage of users who ...
The Duke
Roger Michell's new movie isn't a biopic about Duke University Men's Basketball Coach Mike Krzyzewski, but the film's title would be apropos for one. Coach K is considered basketball royalty. He won five national championships and ended his career in 2022 as the sport's win leader with 1,202 victories against just 368 losses.
The Duke
In 1961, Kempton Bunton, a 60-year old taxi driver, stole Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London. It was the first (and remains the only) theft in the Gallery's history. Kempton sent ransom notes saying that he would return the painting on condition that the government agreed to provide television for free to the elderly.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes First Reviews: A ...
It's been seven years since the last Planet of the Apes movie gave the franchise its best Tomatometer score. Now, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes continues the reboot series with a massive time jump, all new characters, and a new director taking the reins. According to the first reviews of this latest installment, there'll be no topping War for the Planet of the Apes, but it's also ...
10 Biggest Takeaways From Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes' Reviews
Reviews for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes have been largely positive, although not all critics have agreed on the merits of the latest installment in the sci-fi reboot franchise. Set hundreds ...
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Debuts With Promising Critic Score
The fourth installment in the Planet of the Apes reboot series has surpassed one of the films in its predecessor trilogy with its initial Rotten Tomatoes score. The film, titled Kingdom of the ...
Furiosa First Reactions: Brutal, Masterful, and Absolutely Epic
Is this another great entry in the Mad Max franchise?. Furiosa is a BLAST! - Peter Gray, The AU Review Great news, Furiosa is a masterful examination of one of the greatest characters of the last 20 years. - BJ Colangelo, Slashfilm It brings me great joy to report that Furiosa is really, really f-king good. - David Ehrlich, IndieWire Furiosa engulfs you.
Unfrosted's Rotten Tomatoes Scores Are Even Worse Than Bee Movie's
The film received generally mixed reviews, with much of the criticism focusing on Bee Movie's strange premise and lack of plot. Over the years, Bee Movie has become the source of internet mockery ...
'The Fall Guy' review: Ryan Gosling plays a stuntman in an ...
Colt works mainly as a stunt double for Tom Ryder, a world-famous movie star played by a preening Aaron Taylor-Johnson. But when Colt suffers a life-threatening injury on the set, he quits the biz ...
Summer Movie Calendar 2024
Release Date: May 3, 2024 Director: David Leitch Starring: Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Stephanie Hsu, Winston Duke, Hannah Waddingham Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt kick off the summer movie season with this action-packed love letter to stunt performers, appropriately helmed by stuntman-turned-director David Leitch.

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

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‘The Duke’ Review: Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren Give Heart to a Very English Heist Comedy

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Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (noncompeting), Sept. 4, 2020. Running time: 95 MIN.

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