Starring: Jim Broadbent, Helen Mirren, Fionn Whitehead and Anna Maxwell Martin
Distributor: Transmission Films
Runtime: 96 mins. Reviewed in Mar 2022
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan
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This comedy-drama tells of a working class man in Britain who was accused of single-handedly stealing a priceless Goya painting from the National Gallery in London. The heist is dealt with in an entertaining comedy style.
This classic British comedy-drama tells a story loosely based on fact. An ex-taxi driver in Newcastle, UK, Kempton Bunton (Broadbent), is accused of stealing the Portrait of Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, painted by Francisco Goya (worth more than 140 thousand pounds at the time) from London’s National Gallery in 1961. No one had ever stolen anything from the National Gallery before, and the robbery caused a stir.
Brought to trial, Kempton pleaded not guilty. He believed passionately in supporting the causes of social injustice, and thought the kind of money that went into the purchase of Goya’s painting, would have been much better spent on old age pensioners – by providing them, for example, with free TV licences. Kempton is a committed solitary activist; he is an idealist; and he has a rabble-rousing spirit that is contagious. Kempton’s beliefs and actions have made it difficult for him to keep jobs down. Because of his socialist leanings, he keeps getting sacked. When he tells his wife, Dorothy (Mirren) that he has to make a trip down south for a couple of days, he doesn’t tell her the reasons for his visit.
While in London, Goya’s painting was stolen by a robber climbing through the gallery’s bathroom window, and back home he hides the painting in Newcastle, behind his bedroom wardrobe with the help of his son, Jackie (Whitehead). Following the robbery, he sends a series of ransom notes to the government saying that the painting will be returned on the condition that the elderly of Britain receive social benefits, which he defines in terms of the worth of the stolen painting.
Following his arrest and at his trial, Kempton claimed that he ‘borrowed’ the painting to help the poor and the elderly. He was acquitted of all but one charge, and served a three-month sentence for a broken picture frame. With Goya’s painting returned, the law deemed fit not to sentence him for robbery.
This is a likeable British comedy with a late plot twist that genuinely surprises. Broadbent and Mirren are wonderful as the married couple at the heart of the movie, and their performance provides a well-polished piece of entertaining escapism.
Film director, Michell (now deceased), keeps a steady hand on the comic potential of events depicted in the movie. The actual robbery on screen looks improbable, but the lead acting by Broadbent and Mirren keep the film’s moments to watch vibrantly alive. Broadbent takes off the working-class ideals to a tee, and Mirren is delightful as his weary, dowdy wife, who is exasperated with her husband, while grieving for a child they have lost. Kempton is a major problem to his loyal son, Jackie, and Dorothy is the cleaning lady for an aristocratic, liberal woman (Anna Maxwell Martin), who disagrees with Kempton and what he does, but paradoxically supports him.
The film is unashamedly sentimental and intentionally old fashioned in its styling. It holds its tension in abeyance by dwelling on the comic potential of its scenarios, and it chooses to spend time away from the prejudices that obviously ruled Kempton and his wife’s ordinary lives. However, it scores on well-timed nostalgia which the film resurrects from happier times. The film is first and foremost a light-hearted film, that sustains its comic momentum. It is a well-crafted, wittily scripted comedy, built to please and it does.
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