Review: ‘The Duke’ (2021), starring Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren

May 9, 2022

by Carla Hay

Helen Mirren and Jim Broadbent in “The Duke” (Photo courtesy of Pathé UK/Sony Pictures Classics)

“The Duke” (2021)

Directed by Roger Michell

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in the United Kingdom cities of Newcastle and London, in 1961 and briefly in 1965, the comedy/drama film “The Duke” features a cast of nearly all-white characters (with one person of Pakistani heritage) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: An anti-establishment senior citizen, who is grieving over the years-ago death of his teenage daughter, pleads not guilty in his trial for stealing Francisco Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London.

Culture Audience: “The Duke” will appeal primarily to people interested in old-fashioned but well-acted period dramas about feisty and opinionated British people that explore issues of rebelling against society and dealing with personal grief.

Fionn Whitehead and Jack Bandeira in “The Duke” (Photo by Nick Wall/Pathé UK/Sony Pictures Classics)

“The Duke” is more than just a traditionally made movie about a man who goes on trial for stealing a valuable painting from London’s National Gallery. It’s also a witty and emotional drama about a family coping with grief. Based on a true story, “The Duke” is not as predictable as it might seem. The cast members greatly elevate the material, which might have become too lackluster or misguided with the wrong people cast in the roles.

Directed by Roger Michell (who passed away in 2021, at the age of 65), “The Duke” (which takes place in England, mostly in 1961) is really three stories in one, in telling what happened in the year of the life of 60-year-old Kempton Bunton (played Jim Broadbent) before, during and after he was put on trial for a famous art theft. The movie (written by Richard Bean and Clive Coleman) focuses mostly on the “before” part of the story, which is somewhat a detriment to the flow of the narrative, which needed to give more screen time to the trial.

Kempton, who lives in Newcastle, is a spunky nonconformist with a keen sense of questioning government authority and wanting to be a champion for underdogs and underprivileged people. He is a taxi driver by trade, but early on in the story, he gets fired from his taxi job. On the day that Kempton gets fired, his no-nonsense supervisor Freda (played by Val McLane, in a scene-stealing cameo) starts off by telling Kempton that she’s been getting customer complaints that he talks too much. More importantly to the boss, Kempton has also been falling short of handing over the company’s commission for his taxi cash earnings. He’s not exactly accused of stealing, but Kempton’s excuses aren’t good explanations for the missing commission money.

Kempton mumbles something about how he took pity on a cab rider who couldn’t afford to pay the fare. Freda tells Kempton, “I might have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I’ve got the testicles of Henry VIII … I am running a taxi firm, not a charity!” When Freda decides to fire Kempton without paying him the salary that he’s owed, he disagrees with her, and she barks at him: “Sue me then. But fuck off first!”

Kempton’s loyal but frustrated wife Dorothy Bunton (played by Helen Mirren) has gotten fed up with Kempton’s erratic employment. Dorothy is essentially the main breadwinner for the household. She works as a housekeeper for a wealthy middle-aged couple, whose husband is a prominent doctor in the area. Kempton and Dorothy have two sons, both in their 20s.

Younger son Jackie (played by Fionn Whitehead), who is kind and obedient, works as a boat repairer/builder at a shipyard, and he lives with Kempton and Dorothy. Jackie has a crush on a young woman who’s close to his age named Irene Boslover (played by Aimée Kelly), and they have a sweet romance that starts off a little hesitantly, because Jackie is shy when it comes to dating. Jackie greatly admires his eccentric father Kempton, but Dorothy worries that Jackie will be influenced too much by Kempton’s disruptor ways.

Older son Kenny (played by Jack Bandeira), who is rebellious and outspoken, no longer lives with his parents. Kenny is involved in shady and illegal activities that he won’t discuss with his family. And much to Dorothy’s disapproval, Kenny plans to start living with his lover Pamela (played by Charlotte Spencer), nicknamed Pammy, who is legally married but separated from her husband. When Kenny and Pamela visit his parents, it leads to arguments and hard feelings between Kenny and his mother Dorothy.

Kempton and Dorothy are parents to a third child—a daughter named Marian—who died in 1948, at the age 18. She was killed in a car accident while riding a bicycle that Kempton gave her as a gift. Kempton feels tremendous guilt over Marian’s death and visits her grave on a regular basis. Kempton also likes to talk about Marian and reminisce about happy memories that he has of her.

By contrast, Dorothy refuses to discuss Marian and her death. She treats Marian’s death as if it’s a closed door that she doesn’t ever want to open again. She won’t even visit Marian’s grave. Because Kempton and Dorothy have handled Marian’s death in extremely different ways, it’s caused a strain in their marriage.

Kempton has written a drama manuscript, inspired by Marian, called “The Girl on a Bicycle” that he hopes will be produced for television. Later in the movie, Dorothy is horrified when she finds out about this manuscript. “Grief is private!” Dorothy gruffly tells Kempton.

One day, Kempton watches the TV news and sees a report announcing that the National Gallery in London has purchased a Francisco Goya portrait painting of the Duke of Wellington, also known as former U.K. prime minister Arthur Wellesley. The painting is worth £140,000 in 1961 money. Adjusted for inflation, that would be about £267 million in early 2020s money. Kempton scoffs at the extravagant purchase, because he thinks the U.K. government could have put the money to better use.

Kempton is more than a little irritated about it. In a typical Kempton Bunton comment, he remarks to Dorothy about the National Gallery’s purchase of this painting: “You know what’s going on here. Toffs looking after their own. Spending our hard-earned money on a half-baked board rate, by some Spanish drunk, of a duke who was a bastard to his men and was against universal suffrage.” The irony of this comment is that Kempton has not paid his taxes in years.

Later, Kempton goes to London, in an attempt to get media and government attention for his quest to make TV in the United Kingdom free for old age pensioners (OAPs), who are usually on a fixed and limited income. While in London, he sees a newspaper article about the painting where the National Gallery has issued this invitation to visitors who want to see the Duke of Wellington painting: “Line up to meet the Duke!”

And not long after that, the painting is stolen and hidden in the Bunton household. It’s the first time that any art has been stolen from the National Gallery. (And to this day, it remains the only major theft that the National Gallery has experienced.) An anonymous ransom note written and mailed by Kempton announces that the painting is being held “hostage” until the U.K. government agrees to give £140,000 (the price paid for the painting) to worthy causes supporting the elderly and military veterans.

Police commissioner Sir Joseph Simpson (played by Charles Edwards) leads the investigation, but “The Duke” predictably has two bumbling police detectives—DI (Detective Inspector) Macpherson (played by Dorian Lough) and DI Brompton (played by Sam Swansbury)—who do a lot of the grunt work. Commissioner Simpson has a public relations role of giving updates to the media about the investigation. He seems to want all the publicity and glory for solving the case.

The police make the mistake of dismissing the correct suspect profile that a handwriting expert named Dr. Unsworth (played by Sian Clifford) deduced from studying the ransom note and figuring out what type of person wrote it. These detectives are convinced by their own theory that the painting was stolen by an unknown sophisticated gang from another nation, probably from Italy. The detectives also say amongst themselves that a woman who’s a handwriting expert could not possibly know more than these experienced cops.

Through a series of events that won’t be revealed in this review, the painting is discovered in the Bunton house. It’s enough to say that Kempton decides to turn himself in and admit that he “borrowed” the painting, to point out wasteful government spending and to demand that the U.K. government invest in better care for the elderly and military veterans. He pleads not guilty to the theft. None of this is spoiler information, because the movie’s trailer already reveals that Kempton goes on trial for stealing the painting.

Kempton’s trial doesn’t happen until the last third of the movie. Kempton’s defense attorney Jeremy Hutchinson (played by Matthew Goode) sometimes clashes with Kempton behind the scenes, but they both want to win the case. And so, Kempton and Jeremy find some common ground of agreement. The story has a real-life plot twist revealed in the movie’s last 15 minutes, which show how far Kempton is willing to go to stand by his beliefs, even if it’s at great personal risk to himself.

With a working-class man in his 60s as the protagonist, “The Duke” is the type of British drama movie that doesn’t get made very much anymore. Dorothy is a formidable and strong-willed person in this story (and Mirren performs well in the role, as expected), but she’s really a supporting character who reacts to whatever chaos Kempton has created. Broadbent brings roguish charm to this role, and his performance (which is both amusing and heartbreaking) is the main reason to see this film.

“The Duke” is not perfect by any means. The movie takes a little too long to get to the trial, which is somewhat crammed in toward the end of the film. There are several scenes that over-explain how Kempton has trouble keeping a job because of his tendency to question authority. And there’s a repeated cycle of Dorothy getting upset by Kempton’s mischief, and Kempton promising that he won’t cause any more problems and won’t keep secrets from her. And then, he inevitably breaks his promise.

As an example of Kempton’s unstable employment, there’s a section of the movie showing Kempton in a job as an assembly line worker at a bread factory. He befriends a Pakistani co-worker named Javid Akram (played by Ashley Kumar), who is the only employee in that department who isn’t white. Kempton eventually gets fired for standing up to his racist boss Mr. Walker (played by Craig Conway), who bullies Javid by calling him a racial slur and singling him out for unfair treatment.

“The Duke” also tends to be a little too repetitive with Kempton’s bootlegging of the ITV network (which, unlike the BBC, requires payment to receive) on the TV set in his household’s living room. He tries to dodge the authorities he encounters who attempt to fine him for non-payment, but he eventually spends 13 jays in jail when he gets into a scuffle over it. During his ongoing dispute over this issue, Kempton stages protests on the street with “Free TV for OAP” signs, with Jackie recruited as Kempton’s protest companion. Most people who pass Kempton and Jackie on the street just don’t care—and neither will viewers after a while, since the stolen painting is the more interesting part of the movie.

When Kempton’s legal entanglements make the news, Dorothy is embarrassed, makes profuse apologies to her employer Dolly Gowling (played by Anna Maxwell Martin), and promises that she’s not as “unstable” has her husband. Mrs. Gowling, who is married to a difficult and domineering man, has empathy for Kempton. Because she is a supporter of Kempton’s anti-establishment ways, Mrs. Gowling attends his trial as an eager spectator.

Any supporting characters outside of Dorothy and Jackie tend to be drawn in broad strokes that are a little stereotypical. They include the “law and order” characters, such as the aforementioned main detectives; Judge Aarvold (played by James Wilby); prosecutor Edward Cussen (played by John Heffernan); and junior counsel Eric Crowther (played by Joshua McGuire), who works with Jeremy on Kempton’s defense team. Despite some of these narrative flaws, “The Duke” has enough amusing banter, heartfelt moments and well-played scenes to hold the interest of people who are open to watching movies set in 1960s England and that have a retro filmmaking style that matches this era.

Sony Pictures Classics released “The Duke” in select U.S. cinemas on April 22, 2022. The movie was released in Canada and Australia in 2021, and in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Japan on February 25, 2022.

Review: ‘All My Friends Hate Me,’ starring Tom Stourton, Charly Clive, Georgina Campbell, Antonia Clarke, Joshua McGuire, Graham Dickson and Christopher Fairbank

April 8, 2022

by Carla Hay

Georgina Campbell, Graham Dickson, Tom Stourton, Antonia Clarke and Joshua McGuire in “All My Friends Hate Me” (Photo by Ben Moulden/Super LTD)

“All My Friends Hate Me”

Directed by Andrew Gaynord

Culture Representation: Taking place in Devon, England, the comedy/drama “All My Friends Hate Me” features a nearly all-white cast of characters (with one black person) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: For his 32nd birthday, a man reunites with some of his former college friends at a remote estate in the country, and he is plagued with a nagging suspicion that they are conspiring to make him miserable.

Culture Audience: “All My Friends Hate Me” will appeal primarily to people interested in dark comedies/drama that are intended to keep viewers on edge and feeling uncomfortable.

Tom Stourton in “All My Friends Hate Me” (Photo by Ben Moulden/Super LTD)

Deliberately unnerving, “All My Friends Hate Me” taps into people’s insecurities and paranoia that friends can become enemies. Just like the movie’s protagonist, this dark comedy/drama is both fascinating and annoying. The story goes off the rails into incoherence more than a few times, but viewers might remain interested out of curiosity to see how the movie ends.

Directed by Andrew Gaynord, “All My Friends Hate Me” was filmed on location in Devon, England. The movie had its world premiere at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. There’s a very British sensibility to this movie that benefits the story, since British comedy is often about cutting down people who think too highly of themselves.

“All My Friends Hate Me” is told from the perspective of a neurotic man named Pete (played by Tom Stourton), who has a very tension-filled reunion with some of his former college friends for his 32nd birthday. Stourton and Tom Palmer co-wrote the screenplay for “All My Friends Hate Me.” The reunion takes place over a few days, mostly at a place called Cleve Hill Manor, which is in a remote part of the country. The real-life mansion location is actually called Sidbury Manor.

Pete and his university friends come from very privileged backgrounds. For an unnamed period of time, Pete has been working in a refugee camp in an unnamed country. Throughout the movie Pete and his friends show varying levels of elitism, as well as attempts to identify with or interact with less privileged people.

Within these social constructs, Pete feels his own level of discomfort that his friends secretly look down on him because he doesn’t have a high income and spends a lot of time with underprivileged people. However, in the beginning of the movie, Pete is in good spirits, as he travels by himself in his car to the mansion, where his pals have gathered to celebrate his birthday. Pete hasn’t seen these friends in years, but he expects that they will pick up right where they left off, with a lot of good will and positive camaraderie. Pete is about to find out that this assumption is very wrong.

The people who are in this party and who stay overnight at the mansion are:

  • George (played by Joshua McGuire), whose father owns the mansion, but George is the one in the family who spends the most time there, and he oversees the manor’s upkeep. It was George’s idea to throw this birthday party for Pete at the mansion. It’s unclear if George has a profession, but it’s implied that he’s living off of his family’s wealth.
  • Fig (played by Georgina Campbell), George’s wife, who is as status-conscious and self-assured as George is. Fig and George began dating each other when they were in college, and they appear to be happily married.
  • Archie (played by Graham Dickson), a goofy 31-year-old bachelor who is an aspiring entrepreneur. Archie can be socially awkward and has a habit of sometimes saying and doing inappropriate things.
  • Claire (played by Antonia Clarke), an introverted painter artist, who had a fling with Pete when they were in college. Claire was reportedly heartbroken when their would-be romance ended, but she’s decided to stay on friendly terms with Pete.
  • Harry (played by Dustin Demri-Burns), a scruffy and crude 40-year-old country local whom George met at a pub shortly before Pete arrived. George impulsively invited Harry to be a guest at the party after seeing Harry challenging local farmers to rap battles in the pub.
  • Sonia (played by Charly Clive), Pete’s girlfriend, who arrives separately and much later than everyone else at the party. It’s briefly mentioned that Sonia didn’t travel with Pete because of her job commitments.

On his way to the manor, Pete gets lost and asks an elderly man on the road for directions. The man isn’t very friendly and doesn’t seem impressed when Pete says that he’s going to the mansion for his birthday party. Pete is starting to feel anxious because he’s running late.

When Pete arrives at the mansion, he is warmly greeted by friends. When he tells his friends about the strange and unfriendly old man he encountered on the road, Pete is embarrassed to see that the man is standing behind him. His name is Norman (played by Christopher Fairbank), and he’s one of the mansion’s servants. Norman isn’t in the movie much, but his employee role is mostly being a butler.

Not long after Pete arrives for this party, Archie tells Pete that George’s birthday party invitation was a joke. Pete believes Archie, until Archie laughs and confesses that the real joke is that Archie was telling a lie about the party invitation being a prank. It’s the start of Pete feeling unnerved by not knowing what might be sarcastic jokes from the people at this gathering, or what might be genuine attempts to humiliate him.

When Pete and Claire see each other, they catch up on what’s been going on in each other’s lives. In a self-deprecating manner, Claire says that she’s just a “stupid posh girl painting portraits of other posh people.” Pete seems very pleased with himself that he’s a do-gooder for charity in his refugee work, but no one else in this group really wants to hear the details of what Pete does in his job.

Claire isn’t Pete’s only past romantic entanglement from his university days. In a private conversation between Pete and Fig, he reminds Fig that they had had a kissing makeout session once when they were college students. Fig says that she doesn’t remember it. This scene is one of many instances in the movie where viewers are supposed to wonder if Pete’s perspective and memories are entirely reliable.

In a separate private conversation between Pete and George, Pete tells George that he plans to propose marriage to Sonia during an upcoming trip to Paris. George seems happy for Pete, but he warns Pete not to tell Claire, because Claire is “still a bit in love with you.” Pete and Sonia met and started dating each other long after his fling with Claire ended. However, during the course of the movie, Pete worries about if or when he should tell Sonia about his past fling with Claire.

Meanwhile, Pete becomes more and more annoyed that Harry has been invited to this party, as Pete begins to suspect that Harry is up to no good and is targeting Pete in particular. The tension between Pete and Harry begins when Pete finds out that he and Harry have adjoining rooms, and Harry has a tendency to invade Pete’s personal space. For example, when Pete is taking a bath, Harry has no qualms about walking into the bathroom, taking off all of his clothes, and walking around naked in front of Pete.

During a group dinner, Harry makes Pete even more uncomfortable with his weird and offbeat jokes. Archie babbles on about an app he’s developing to connect wealthy travelers who want to do things such as jet skiing while chasing whales. When Pete comments that that the app sounds super-elitist, Archie then states what he thinks is the purpose of the app being exclusive to wealthy people: “At least you’re not having your holiday ruined by some random peaz [short for peasant].”

Pete somewhat lectures Archie to be “more aware” of who’s in the room when Archie talks like a classist snob. Without saying Harry’s name out loud, Pete is implying that Harry is presumably working-class and might be offended by Archie’s derogatory attitude about people who aren’t rich and privileged. However, Pete’s assumption is somewhat classist in and of itself.

Even though Harry doesn’t dress in designer clothes, and he was hanging out at a local pub with working-class people, that doesn’t automatically mean anyone should assume what his status is, when it comes to his finances or social class. In fact, Harry reveals very little about himself during his time spent with these strangers. He sticks to being a jokester. And that makes Pete even more anxious, because he thinks Harry is making Pete the butt of Harry’s jokes.

Things start to get weirder for Pete when he notices that Harry has been staring at Pete and writing in a notebook, as if Harry is observing Pete and spying on him. And there’s an incident where Harry takes some of Pete’s aspirin without Pete’s permission. Pete confides in Archie that he thinks Harry is “fucking with me, or he doesn’t like me.” Archie thinks Pete is being too paranoid. Pete’s paranoia isn’t helped when he later snorts some cocaine in a party scene.

Not all of the movie’s scenes take place in the mansion. There’s an unevenly written scene where the men go out in the woods for a hunting excursion. There’s also a scene that takes place in a pub that was rented out for part of Pete’s birthday celebration.

During the course of the movie, Pete begins to see signs that his life might be in danger. He’s certain that he saw a bloody body in a car that’s parked outside the manor. And there comes a point in the story where Pete is genuinely convinced that Harry is going to kill him.

“All My Friends Hate Me” plays guessing games with viewers over what is real and what might be Pete’s hallucinations. After a while, the movie turns into an expected showdown/confrontation between Pete and Harry. And that comes as a disservice to the movie’s other characters, who seem hollow and underdeveloped in comparison. The cast members in those supporting roles are therefore forced to be limited in their acting range. Demri-Burns gives a compelling performance as the mysterious Harry, but even that character has its limitations.

Stourton carries the movie quite well in the central role of Pete, who is both sympathetic and irritating. Viewers will feel empathy for Pete when he starts to believe that he’s an outsider at his own birthday party/reunion with his friends. But at some point, Pete (who tells people he’s in therapy) is frustratingly immature in how he handles whatever problems he seems to be having. Pete starts to feel some disdain toward his friends because he thinks that they are shallow and haven’t emotionally matured since their university days.

However, Pete has a lot of flaws too, which become more apparent as the story goes on in frequently repetitive ways. There are only so many times that viewers need to see varying degrees of “Pete versus Harry” before it starts to drag down the story. “All My Friends Hate Me” does have a knockout scene in the last third of the film, where secrets are revealed. But one of the characters is let off the hook too easily in the movie’s final scene, which might turn off some viewers from this film entirely.

Although “All My Friends Hate Me” has been described as a “horror film,” it’s best to know going into this movie that it’s more of a psychological drama with a lot of comedic satire. “All My Friends Hate Me” will make viewers feel unsettled or tense, but it’s definitely not as terrifying as a horror movie is supposed to be. There’s nothing incompetent about this movie’s filmmaking or acting, but “All My Friends Hate” is clearly not meant to have mass appeal. The movie is at its best when it takes an incisive look at social anxieties and the pressure that people put on themselves to impress others.

Super LTD released “All My Friends Hate Me” in select U.S. cinemas on March 11, 2022. The movie was released on digital and VOD on March 25, 2022.

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