The movie

The Duke

Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren star as Kempton and Dorothy Bunton, an ageing husband and wife in early 60s Newcastle, who are solidly socialist and working class. Except Kempton is also a bit of a crook.....

Length: 95 min
Country: United Kingdom
Language spoken: English
Language subtitles: Dutch
Cast: Jim Broadbent, Helen Mirren, Fionn Whitehead, Aimée Kelly, Charlotte Spencer, Jack Bandeira, Matthew Goode, Anna Maxwell Martin, Sian Clifford
Director: Roger Michell
Release date: 17/03/2022

Description

The last fiction feature directed by Roger Michell before his death last year is a rousing swan song to a storied career. Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren star as Kempton and Dorothy Bunton, an ageing husband and wife in early 60s Newcastle, who are solidly socialist and working class. Except Kempton is also a bit of a crook, and when he hears of the government spending £140,000 on Goya’s ‘Portrait of the Duke of Wellington’, he decides to steal it, exact a ransom, and redistribute the funds among the poor…

‘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… 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.’—Xan Brooks, The Guardian