the good liar movie review

 the good liar 

Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen present the award-winning role-play in Bill Condon's most brilliant and sophisticated play.

the good liar movie review

Betty McLeish (Helen Mirren) is a widow in her 70's who lives in a house full of tasty pastel furniture in a quiet, lonely London area. She is handsome, handsome, modest, and modest, with glowing skin emblazoned with a white-gray coffee table; if Doris Day had been a middle-aged English woman, she would have looked and acted like this. The opening sequence of “Good Liar” goes back and forth between Betty filling out a list of user questions on a website called Different Dating and the man she just met on the site did the same. (They tell each other a blatant lie or two, Betty picks up a “non-drink” box in the middle of a glass of wine. of London, where he and his day gathered for dinner.

He comes in, looking like a dog in a trench coat, and sits down opposite him with his eyes twinkling. His name, once they have agreed to lead each other with a false name, is Roy Courtnay, and he is played by Ian McKellen as a key figure in the Old World fuddy-duddy charm of Britain. Roy is the kind of man who is so “cunning” that he is as cunning as he can be. Their conversation turns to the inevitable downfall of online dating - to the frustration that comes with seeing that the other person is less attractive and less attractive than you are led to believe. This is a film's way of pointing out that the next mix will be made to shine like onions. Yet Roy's integrity and the splendor of Betty's home seem to fit perfectly. If the film had not been called “A Good Lie,” we would have thought: This could be the beginning of a wonderful friendship.

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The two lonely hearts bid each other farewell, and after telling Betty that she would catch the subway, Roy sees her and sighs, “Can you call?” He then jumped into a taxi and ordered the driver to take him to Springfellows, a London men's club, where he was ushered into the back room. There, on top of the Champagne hats, he holds court and a few men, explaining the critical agreement - the opportunity to invest 50,000 pounds each, and the immediate opportunity to double that investment. The fact that some mysterious Russians are involved makes the agreement sound like a sketch. But whatever happens, one message may not be clear: Roy is not what he looks like.

"The Good Liar" is based on Nicholas Searle's 2016 novel (Jeffrey Hatcher's script), and directed by Bill Condon, talented and eclectic ("Beauty and the Beast," "Kinsey," "Twilight" and two films. " Gods and Monsters, "" Dreamgirls "), as a wonderful and sophisticated entertainment that invites us to invest in the game as it is in the characters. The way the movie works, Mirren does not portray Betty as a playwright but as a brilliant woman of solid values, whose reliance on humans is a reflection of her beautiful nature. Mirren gives him modesty, as he jokes about the little sarcasm of Betty's dreams.

However since we do not want to see Betty injured, it would be very easy to say that “The Good Liar” puts us on her side. While we realize that Roy is rude, we are drawn to his moral deception - the way he tricks the gimpy's leg to stay in Betty's place, or to make himself an excellent tea-time company, or to sell to those investors. with so much scam that you are not sure if you are withdrawing or clapping.

Roy is cunning, with a courtesy attitude that is entirely fraudulent, and the truth may be even darker. (As we read, he has a natural instinct for the murder of a man younger than decades.) Yet just as Hitchcock, in "Shadow of a Doubt," makes the audience look like Joseph Cotten's murderous Uncle Charlie, "The Good Liar" brings us closer. on Roy's web, to watch with cold interest as he sets his traps.

Betty's granddaughter, Steven (Russell Tovey), a young lawyer who was temporarily occupied by his lawyer, joined Roy. Or, at least, he feels that something is too funny to be true of him. So he injects her, picking up her façade, without the idea of ​​what is underneath it. The closer the mother gets to Roy, the more likely Steven is to react the way he did. Roy and Betty's relationship has a low level of love for them, yet it is actually friendly; even platonic. (Losing her husband three years ago, Betty says she is not ready to take the plunge.) However, when Roy takes advantage of their newfound friendship to start talking to Betty about his financial security, he introduces her to Vincent (Jim Carter), his beetle-financial adviser. as a very simple symbol.

The fun of “The Good Liar,” and great, is an opportunity to see Mirren and McKellen perform together in a cat and mouse game that turns into a beautiful waltz of love and deception. His Roy is like Mr. Talented Ripley as an octogenarian cutthroat - a man who buried all the emotions, but just exploded anyway. And she plays Betty as a woman who trusts in her whole heart, which seems to be her deceptive kind of power. Betty and Roy once made a trip to Europe, and it was in Berlin that her facade began to open. But a little.

We are familiar with movies about scams that turn into shell game entertainment, such as "Ocean" films or David Mamet's comedy. But "Good Liar" turns out to have a much more serious picture than you might expect. There is a backstory, set during World War II, and it is all about violence, survival, crimes against women, and the seeds of a sociopath. All in all, however, you may feel that the worst geniuses in the first part of the film didn't have to be yeasted with the history of counting history. (You may also find that the sound feature is more flexible for comfort.)