Jim Broadbent Will Charm You Senseless In ‘The Duke’ An Irresistible Art-Heist Britcom Co-Starring Helen Mirren [Venice Review]
You could dine on nothing but lard for twenty years and still not develop the hardness of heart necessary to avoid being won over by Roger Michell‘s “The Duke,” a ridiculously charming British comedy that dunks a gamely accented prestige cast into an appealingly milky true story like so many digestives into a warm, well-earned, early evening cuppa. With the shaggy-dog tale of the 1961 theft of Goya’s portrait of The Duke of Wellington from London’s National Gallery reworked into a zippy screenplay by playwrights Richard Bean and Clive Coleman, all Michell really needed to do was find the perfect actor to embody the lead character’s daffy, unsinkable spirit.