ReviewThe Good Liar film review: Ian McKellen, Helen Mirren co-star in disappointing con-artist thriller
- This adaptation of Nicholas Searle’s 2015 novel about a ruthless con artist who targets a retired widow is badly let down by gaping holes in the plot
- McKellen and Mirren, appearing together in a film for the first time, are always watchable, however
2/5 stars
Twenty-one years ago, director Bill Condon collaborated with Ian McKellen on the sublime Gods and Monsters, the Oscar-winning story of the final days of Frankenstein director James Whale.
They’ve twice reunited – for Mr. Holmes , with McKellen as an aged Sherlock, and Beauty and the Beast , Condon’s US$1.2 billion-grossing film for Disney. Now they’re back together for The Good Liar, an adaptation of Nicholas Searle’s 2015 novel about a ruthless con artist who targets a retired widow.
In Roy Courtnay, McKellen has not played a character this nasty since he was a former Nazi in hiding in 1998’s Apt Pupil; even his villainous X-Men character, Magneto, had a certain charm. Here, he meets Betty McLeish (Helen Mirren) via an online dating site, and swiftly plans to get his feet under the table and lure her into investing all her savings in a financial swindle run by his partner-in-crime, Vincent (Downton Abbey’s faithful butler Jim Carter).
Betty seems smitten with Roy; he comes on all fragile and frail, but the audience knows otherwise – early on, we see him instruct some heavies to take a hammer and smash the hand of someone who has crossed him. Only Betty’s grandson (Russell Tovey) seems suspicious of this genial gent. Beyond that, it’s difficult to say much about The Good Liar, which comes riddled with double bluffs in a second half that dips back into Roy’s past.