Academy Award nominee, Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings (2001), a career con artist in The Good Liar (2019), now 83-year-old Sir Ian McKellen stars as a powerful acid-tongued 1934 London theatre critic who sweet-talks an actress into a blackmail scheme to save his job and it all leads to dire consequences in The Critic.
How he plots while arrogantly besmirching the actress in his reviews makes for a guileful turn of events.
Asked in an interview why he accepted the role, Ian McKellen replied, “Because it was a job. It was a world I know a lot about. I know theatre and I was a gay man who grew up in the era.”
Before the age of the internet, computers and television, the newspaper, the Fourth Estate, ruled supreme.
Jimmy Erskine (Ian McKellan) writes for The Chronicle, a newspaper inherited by David Brooke (Mark Strong) from his deceased father.
Brooke wants it to be Britain’s foremost family newspaper.
He tells his nasty-witted critic to write with more beauty, less beast.
In the trade Erskine is nicknamed the Beast for using words as weapons.
He is brutal and enjoys every cutting phrase his loyal secretary Tom (Alfred Enoch) types.
In his 60-year career McKellen has never played so vile a character.
Erskine has 30 years writing experience, has become disillusioned with theatre genre and delights in taking down actors and their plays rather than enjoying them.
One actor in particular, Nina Land (Gemma Arterton), no matter what role on stage, feels the wrath of Erskine’s pen.
Nina declares to Erskine that he has likened her to “livestock, creatures of the sea, and an extinct bird.”
If readers of The Chronicle enjoy Erskine’s scathing reviews, newspaper owner Brooke has had enough of cruel opinions.
He sheds tears during Nina’s performance.
Brooke learns of Erskine’s brush with the law, a dalliance in the park with a younger man; holding hands, a kiss, a hug was an indecent act, then, subject to criminal prosecution.
Brooke sets about seeing the malicious critic into retirement.
A vulnerable starlet, a lovelorn newspaperman besotted with Nina, even Jimmy’s live-in secretary Tom become collateral damage in Jimmy Erskine’s Machiavellian scheme.
The Critic is a sordid tale of blackmail, sex and death.
High drama is reduced to melodrama.
The film should be seen for a lesson in outstanding acting.
McKellan said in an interview that he was completely in admiration of the performances of others in the cast.
McKellen and Arterton are exceptional, as the electricity between Jimmy and Nina is the most fascinating element of the movie.
Ian McKellen’s Jimmy is put to expressive use.
A slight movement of the lip, an eye twitch, the tilt in wearing of his hat, the eye bags all are packed with spite and mean-spirited venom.
Even when his character smiles, better watch out, better not trust.
Movie: The Critic
Duration: 99 mins
Director: Anand Tucker
Starring: Ian McKellan, Gemma Arterton, Mark Strong, Alfred Enoch
Rating: ***½
Reviewed by Lawrenty
