The Duke review: Jim Broadbent is disarmingly winsome in the late Roger Michell’s comedy caper

Dir: Roger Michell. Starring: Jim Broadbent, Helen Mirren, Fionn Whitehead, Anna Maxwell Martin, Matthew Goode. 12A, 95 minutes.

If Jim Broadbent ever felt inclined to commit a high-stakes art heist, The Duke is proof that he would probably get away with it. He’s that disarmingly winsome in Roger Michell’s final film, which offers an unlikely spin on the classic comedy caper. The director, who died last September, always made films with a sort of gentle affability (Broadbent previously starred in one of Michell's best, 2013’s Le Week-End). And, as The Duke reminds us once more, he knew how to get the very best out of his actors without forcing unnecessary dramatics.

The film sees Broadbent play one Kempton Bunton. He was not, as the name suggests, the protagonist of an Ealing comedy, though The Duke has one foot firmly planted in the genre. He was a real man who, in 1961, was accused of stealing Goya’s Portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery. The film’s script, written by Clive Coleman and Richard Bean, provides a neat summary of his motivations, as expressed by a handwriting expert (played by Sian Clifford, aka Claire from Fleabag). “He’s a fantasist who believes he’s an idealist,” she declares – a Don Quixote-style auto-didact with a socialist drive and very little clue about grassroots campaigning. It’s all received with widespread befuddlement by his two sons, played by Jack Bandeira and Dunkirk's Fionn Whitehead, and wife of many years, played by Helen Mirren.

He refurbishes his TV set so that it can’t play the BBC and, when the TV licensors inevitably come knocking, argues that it’s “a political act” – “it’s an unfair tax on ordinary people, especially the oldies who can’t afford it”. The theft of Goya’s portrait, too, is its own political act. The government spent £140,000 of taxpayer money on a portrait of a man who, as Bunton points out, was against universal suffrage, all to preserve some idea of the “nation’s heritage”. When we see the painting snatched from its display, the camera lingers a little – revealing that Edvard Munch’s The Scream was hung behind it. It’s not merely a cutesy visual joke, but a reinforcement of the idea that this theft is a purely symbolic one.

The Duke takes a somewhat simplistic approach to Bunton’s political sentiments and, because of the film’s various Covid-related delays, it feels oddly disconnected from the current landscape. It celebrates the fact that, in 2000, free TV licences were introduced for the over-75s, without mentioning that they were subsequently revoked in 2020. And there’s a somewhat rote way to how the supporting characters are written – the only non-white character is dropped in purely so that Bunton can step in at the right time and defend him from racism. Anna Maxwell Martin’s sympathetic, wealthy employer seems to be forced in as some sort of #notallposhos safeguard. And then Matthew Goode swaggers in after about an hour as Bunton’s defence barrister to help condense his entire worldview into the words: “I am you, you are me.” The film tries to stick an untimely death onto the story as a great psychological motivator for Bunton’s actions.

But The Duke feels low stakes enough that Broadbent and Mirren are allowed to relax into their roles. Mirren is essentially playing the put-upon wife but delivers each beat with such unfussy authenticity that she resists the archetype singlehanded. Michell, meanwhile, buoys the film with the jazzy beats and split-screen effects of so many Sixties comedies. There’s an irresistible lightness of touch to his style. So when the police become convinced that the heist could only have been pulled off by a “trained commando or ex-special forces”, it feels like the punchline to one, big inside joke. A dad joke, maybe – but a joke, still.