The great Ian McKellen is in his element as Jimmy Erskine, a vitriolic theatre critic who relishes his power to make or break a performance or an actor.
The Critic is set in 1930s London and Erskine is the veteran theatre columnist for a tabloid newspaper, The Daily Chronicle.
But changes are afoot. The newspaper proprietor who hired him has died and his son, Viscount David Brooke (Mark Strong), does not appreciate it when Erskine’s reviews get too malicious.
When the critic writes, “Hold your breath as you pass the Duke’s Theatre, for here is untreated theatrical sewage,” Brookes asks him to tone it down.
Erskine is gay, and enjoys cruising the local park for rough sex, getting a thrill from the humiliation and danger. Brookes warns him that any public embarrassment would lead to his dismissal – and when he is arrested, he is fired.
From this point, the film starts to go off the rails.
Erskine, desperate to get back his job, with the power and the status he lives for, devises a complicated plan to force Brooke to take him back.
He involves a vulnerable young actress, Nina Land (an outstanding Gemma Arterton), promising to promote her career with glowing reviews, if she would seduce the happily-married Brooke, leaving him open to blackmail.
Land reluctantly agrees – but the plot degenerates into an improbable tangle of suicide, murder and disgrace.
Written by Patrick Marber from the novel Curtain Call, by Anthony Quinn, and directed by Anand Tucker, The Critic is worth seeing, if only for the masterful performance by 85-year-old McKellen (who always seems to have a cigarette dangling from his mouth).
Now showing at at Luna Leederville, Luna On SX and the Windsor Cinema.
Watch the trailer…
