Terrific energy … Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen in The Good Liar. Meanwhile, Roy and Betty continue with their cute dates, including one in which the foreshadowing is a little too on-the-nose: After a screening of Tarantino’s historically revisionist World War II film “Inglourious Basterds” — “Liar” is set in 2009 — they commiserate about how young people all too often take stories at face value. The Good Liar Critics Consensus. To avoid ruining the film, you should not only stop reading this review, … The veteran pair duel hypnotically in a mystery thriller whose occasional silliness is masked by storytelling gusto, Last modified on Thu 7 Nov 2019 16.40 GMT. Why would Mirren, no one’s notion of a damsel in distress, take a role that allows her to be little more than a helpless victim? The only question is when the rug will be pulled out — not from under Betty, but from under us. “The Good Liar” requires something stricter than a standard spoiler warning. Mirren plays a retired, well-off widow called Betty McLeish looking for decorous romantic companionship from a silver-years dating website. But when they get together in person, they hit it off quickly, with Betty charmed by Roy’s humor and turns of phrase. They meet — on a dating website, anyway — during the opening credits. The most important news stories of the day, curated by Post editors and delivered every morning. The director is Bill Condon, and it’s adapted by screenwriter Jeffrey Hatcher from the bestselling 2016 novel by first-time author Nicholas Searle who caused a flurry of his own by announcing that he was “not allowed to say more about his career than that he was a senior civil servant for many years”. It spoils itself. (This is the sort of puzzle of a movie in which words such as “tickety-boo” and “fond” play into the endgame). The Best ... seems warranted in the world of books: there are always good books being written. And he is dangerous: After telling Betty, for instance, that he will meet her for tea at Fortnum & Mason, he absconds to a tube station to commit a murder. Roy then puts his grift into action, insinuating himself in Betty’s life by feigning a knee injury so that he can move into her guest room in a secluded retirement community. Holmes”), which largely sidelines Mirren as it focuses more and more on Roy’s other cons. This thriller doesn’t need a spoiler warning. Could a retired Oxford professor really be dumb enough to fall for the idea that she and Roy, who have by this point started living together but are still platonic companions, open a joint account? The Good Liar review – Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen are irresistible 4 / 5 stars 4 out of 5 stars. The Good Liar is less than the sum of its prestigious parts, but Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren keep the proceedings consistently watchable. 109 minutes. It is always fun to watch the creases in McKellen’s face as the gears turn in Roy’s head, and the actor appears to get a kick out of switching on a dime between fragile Roy and menacing Roy. • The Good Liar is released in the UK on 8 November, in the US on 15 November and in Australia on 5 December. The story, which is ultimately about how we wish to portray ourselves, lands well enough, for the most part. On their first date, there are already hints that all is not as it seems, when Roy and Betty both confess to using fake names on their dating profiles. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. It features delicious performances by. Ian McKellen charms as Roy, a London con man who woos elderly women into signing their savings over to him. his mystery thriller is outrageous and irresistible, an old-fashioned drama with dashes of Patricia Highsmith, Patrick Hamilton, John le Carré and maybe Elizabeth Jane Howard’s memoir Slipstream. But during her offscreen time, Betty is — what? The film, adapted from Nicholas Searle’s 2016 novel of the same title, is structurally lopsided. This movie rattles along with terrific energy and dash and the flashback sequences show that it’s actually far more daring and ambitious that you might expect. Their work here probably wouldn’t crack any lists of their Top 20 or so performances, but the sheer fun of watching them playing off of each other helps give their scenes a charge that they might have lacked in other hands. Steven is right to worry – because Roy is a dead-eyed predatory conman, working with phoney accountant Vincent (a nice performance from Jim Carter) to bilk greedy businessmen out of their cash and trick widows out of their savings. The New Yorker may earn a portion of … The finale could be written with entirely different details, and almost no scene preceding it would have to change. R. At area theaters. How Hatcher unknots all of the movie’s various twists is less than satisfying. After the evening is over, Roy introduces us to the unsavory sideline he runs with his accomplice (Jim Carter): It’s a scheme involving an offshore investment opportunity and some Russians. “The Good Liar” isn’t really about grand moral issues, anyway, beyond a simple fact: The echoes of a lie, however distant, never really fade. When not following the couple’s courtship, the movie stays with Roy, who is revealed to be not a charming and frail widower but a coldblooded con man with multiple schemes going at once. (Apart from the romance, he is involved in a plan to bilk shady investors of tens of thousands of pounds.) This mystery thriller is outrageous and irresistible, an old-fashioned drama with dashes of Patricia Highsmith, Patrick Hamilton, John le Carré and maybe Elizabeth Jane Howard’s memoir Slipstream. A few times. But an even larger issue arises: Despite Betty’s lack of dialogue, no reasonably attentive filmgoer ever would imagine her — a retired Oxford professor who casually reels off her millions in assets — to be the easy mark that Roy expects her to be. But can anyone ever escape the past? As the film crosscuts between their online interactions, we see that they are already both liars, albeit in a mild sense. The sleight of hand “The Good Liar” tries to pull off might be easier to keep hidden on the page. It isn’t long before Roy has actually moved in as a platonic house guest to the astonished disapproval of Betty’s grandson Steven (Russell Tovey) a postgraduate student who occasionally stays overnight at Betty’s house. She finds herself set up for lunch with roguish old charmer Roy Courtnay (McKellen) who enchants her with his twinkly-eyed naughtiness, and, even though Betty can see he’s a little bit improper, she’s no prig and likes a laugh. The Good Liar review: Devious duo McKellen and Mirren are still a cut above. “The Good Liar” requires something stricter than a standard spoiler warning. Steven, an expert on World War II history, immediately turns a suspicious eye on Roy, prying into aspects of Roy’s life, including how he got a certain scar from his military service. His target here is a seemingly unwitting widow he has met through an online dating service, Betty, played by the ever-delicious Helen Mirren. Contains some strong violence, coarse language and brief nudity. The film doesn’t so much ask this as gesture to it, awkwardly. By signing up you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, A professional critic’s assessment of a service, product, performance, or artistic or literary work. “The Good Liar” is ultimately a near-miss that offers up a few reasonable diversions along the way, the main one being the inspired pairing of the two leads. Roy (Ian McKellen) indicates that he is a nonsmoker even as he puffs on a cigarette at his keyboard. ‘The Good Liar’ Review: For Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen, the Truth Hurts, Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen in “The Good Liar.”, much more interesting “Gods and Monsters”. Rated R. Pervasive prevarication. The film doesn’t so much ask this as gesture to it, awkwardly. Betty’s skeptical grandson Steven (Russell Tovey) — a doctoral candidate — is not as delighted as his grandmother seems to be by her new houseguest, or his affinity for whimsically antiquated language. To avoid ruining the film, you should not only stop reading this review, but also pass on seeing the movie, which tips its hand practically from the moment the main characters meet. Unfortunately, the director, Bill Condon, whose first film with McKellen was the much more interesting “Gods and Monsters” in 1998, is not an Alfred Hitchcock or a Brian De Palma — a filmmaker with a visual style seductive enough to offer distraction from the grinding plot mechanics, which are especially clunky here. Asking such questions is the wrong way to approach this movie, which involves several layers of misdirection. In an otherwise taut acting showcase, the film is punctuated by bits of jarring violence that threaten to throw the story off the rails. It features delicious performances by Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen – I don’t think McKellen has had such a juicy role since his turn in the 1998 drama Apt Pupil – and the film has such storytelling gusto that you’ll overlook bits of implausible silliness involving smartphone-type “handsets” with which large financial sums can supposedly be transferred from one bank account to another. There are a couple of problems with this adaptation by screenwriter by Jeffrey Hatcher (“Mr. 2019 in Review. Betty (Helen Mirren) passes herself off as a nondrinker as she sips from a glass of wine. Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post: The fun of "The Good Liar" is that, just when you think you've got a proper handle on what's going on, your reality is completely shattered. Hatcher and director Bill Condon (“Beauty and the Beast”) ultimately stumble at the finish line. As it progresses, the film reveals complications (it plays particularly dubious tricks with the way it parcels out flashbacks to the 1940s) and a motive that might as well have been picked out of a hat. But maybe this scheme to hoodwink Betty will not go as smoothly as smug Roy thinks. Based on novelist Nicholas Searle’s best-selling 2016 debut, “The Good Liar” is a silly breeze of a movie starring two of Britain’s finest actors, each having a blast playing cat-and-mouse with the other. It’s a great duel between McKellen and Mirren. The real good liar is whoever convinced Mirren and McKellen to class up such thin and arbitrary material. When you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.

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