24 Lies a Second: Scam and Ham
Created | Updated Nov 17, 2019
Scam and Ham
Cinema is an emotional art form, and it can make you feel many things: awe, excitement, wonder, anger, compassion, terror. What doesn't happen quite so much is a trip to the movies making you feel young, but I am happy to report that this is the effect that going to see Bill Condon's The Good Liar had on me. I should make clear that this has relatively little to do with the quality of the film itelf, and much more to do with the fact that I went to a weekday matinee showing. It's very unusual, these days, for me to be the youngest person at the showing of a movie (unless I'm the only one there), but I felt positively spring chicken-esque on this occasion. There was a very good turn-out for the movie (far more people than were at the teatime showing of Midway the previous day), and all in all it was an interesting opportunity to see how the more mature generation approach film-watching etiquette. So it was that I settled down to enjoy the new movie, doing my best to ignore the faint whistle of hearing-aid feedback, the less faint murmuring of people attempting to explain the plot to each other, the distinctly un-faint trilling and flashing of smartphones, and the flagrant disregard of the allocated seating system.
Why so many oldies at this particular movie? Well, I suspect it's mainly because of the two leads, Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren, who are both there or thereabouts when it comes to much-loved national treasure status, in addition to knocking on a bit themselves. One of the many slightly odd things about this film is that it does appear to be pitching very much to the older generation, but on the other hand it also contains a lot of things that this same generation reputedly have issues with, specifically graphic violence and fruity language.
The Good Liar opens with both McKellen and Mirren joining an online dating website for older folk, and it is almost immediately made clear that neither of them is being absolutely honest in their responses. But they seem to hit it off, even after they both come clean about the fact that they are not, as advertised, Brian and Estelle, but actually Roy and Betty: he is a distinguished gent with a vague, military background, while she is a former Oxford academic now enjoying life as a rich widow. They have a very pleasant lunch together and then go their separate ways, Betty leaving with her grandson (Russell Tovey).
The movie stays with Roy, however, which if nothing else allows us to enjoy more of McKellen's performance. This is shaping up to be something really quite special, with the actor at his most sly and impish. Rather than toddling off home, he heads to Stringfellow's nightclub, where it soon becomes apparent he is a professional fraudster engaged on a very slick long con with his partner Vincent (Jim Carter). His involvement with Betty is obviously also part of the build-up to another swindle.
But as the con proceeds and Roy does his best to dispel the suspicions of Betty's grandson, it almost seems that he is starting to have genuine feelings for his intended victim. Could it be that the old rogue is finally growing a conscience and beginning to have second thoughts about his plan...?
Well, you know, Bill Condon is one of those people with a shockingly variable track record – he wrote and directed the rather good Gods and Monsters, back in the 1990s, and more recently was behind the camera for The Fifth Estate and Mr Holmes, both of which I thought were pretty decent movies. However – and here you must imagine the authorial voice of the blog taking on its gravest and most sombre tone – the case for the prosecution is arguably much more significant. Not only was Condon the perpetrator of the final couple of Twilight movies, he was also one of the writers of the bafflingly popular diversity barn-dance The Greatest Showman. So the question must be: which way is this particular movie going to turn out?
Confusingly, the answer to this may be 'both', as while The Good Liar is utterly ridiculous, it is also highly entertaining, although probably not in quite the way the film-makers had in mind. Condon and his associates were probably aiming to produce a gripping and unpredictable thriller, with quite a hard, dark edge to it. This they have not managed to achieve, because you would have to be a fairly undemanding viewer not to figure out which way this film is going well in advance of the denouement. On the other hand, the film does feature a lot of very good actors who are clearly having a whale of a time having fun with some rather ripe material. McKellen, for instance, is front and centre for most of the movie, and his twinkliness and smarminess are both set to maximum throughout. This is such a big performance – I would say he was overacting, without actually being hammy – that it does almost unbalance the movie.
Of course, I suspect the reason McKellen is being quite so extravagant with his performance is because he realises the film needs it in order to function. The film, as mentioned, does aspire to a considerable level of twisty-turniness, but the twists and turns are generally quite absurd and impossible to take seriously. There's no point trying to be subtle and naturalistic in a story as daft as this one: you may as well go all in and at least try to have some fun with it. This is the approach that McKellen (and, eventually, Mirren) appear to be going for.
As an exercise in outrageous camp, The Good Liar passes the time very entertainingly, although I must say again that some key plot developments are very predictable. There is also the issue that the film was obviously conceived as a serious drama with a dark and quite vicious edge to it: there are moments of significant violence which jar very strongly with the overall tone of the movie. (I should also mention that the film indicates that the British obsession with events during and just after the Second World War also shows no signs of abating.) There is also something which feels a little incorrect about the structure of the climax: the thing about a good twist is that you should really be able to work it out in advance, and in this case that simply isn't true.
Nevertheless, it's a spry and fairly slick movie, and I suppose the nature of the story means that the predictability of some of the plot isn't really a problem (it also compensates for the absurdity of much of the rest of it). I enjoyed watching the actors do their stuff, even if I was probably laughing in the wrong places and for the wrong reasons most of the time.
Also This Week...
...as noted, Roland Emmerich's Midway, a retelling of the events of the Second World War in the Pacific, from Pearl Harbor up until the title battle. As you might expect, this results in a large and unwieldy movie, stuffed with subplots and characters, not all of whom really serve the story. The battle of Midway itself is reasonably well-presented, and the film has a vague stab at being even-handed in its presentation of the Japanese side, but in the end it is basically a collection of lengthy special-effects sequences linked together by slightly trite scenes of men being stoically patriotic (and occasionally patriotically stoical) together.
The battle scenes are pretty, but never look like anything other than well-made special effects – this is combat as a spectacle, not something with any stakes or emotional consequences to it. Patrick Wilson is decent as a navy analyst, while Woody Harrelson does a reasonable job as Admiral Nimitz, but most of the characters are hard to warm up to. In the end it is watchable as a slightly old-fashioned war movie, but it's nowhere close to the standard of Emmerich's most entertaining films.
...Tom Harper's The Aeronauts. The year is 1862 and Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones go up in a balloon to invent the science of meteorology, engaging in some light character development and high-altitude jeopardy along the way. The scenes of them up in the balloon are given a bit of ballast by more conventional flashbacks showing how the flight came about – though this is really very average bonnet-opera stuff.
The problem with this movie is that as a true-life drama it doesn't even achieve take-off: Redmayne's character was a real person, but Jones' is entirely fictitious, presumably included because a strong feminist message is considered essential by some of the people who finance films these days. As anything else – well, it's a bit too slow and polite to really be an adventure movie (although there are some fairly queasy moments for anyone who has an issue with heights), and very thin and lightweight as a conventional drama. But it looks nice and the score is good.
