TORONTO – About 20 minutes into “The Critic” it may occur to anyone paying attention that screenwriter and noted playwright and screenwriter Patrick Farber might not be a fan of the profession that is at the center of his new film. Then again, maybe we’re just taking it a bit personally. Maybe every character in the Anand Tucker-directed thriller is as selfish and professionally corrupt as the film’s protagonist Jimmy Erskine, a 1930s newspaper critic often portrayed with devilish glee by none other than Ian McKellen. Wait. Nope. The rest of the movie pretty much makes him the one and only bad guy and a barely sympathetic one at that.
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[O.K., deep breath. We swear we won’t let this influence our opinion. Because, hey, if you can’t laugh at yourself, how can you laugh at anyone else? It’s all fun till the critic ruins real people’s lives, right?]
A very loose adaption of Anthony Quinn’s 2015 novel “Curtain Call” (and we mean so loose we’re not sure where the source material still is), “The Critic” finds Jimmy entering his fourth or fifth decade of living the high life as the notorious theater reviewer for The Daily Chronicle, a fictional and conservative-leaning London newspaper. With his personal secretary Tom (Alfred Enoch) by his side, and perhaps often more inebriated than he should be, Jimmy mostly eviscerates one play or performance after another insisting his tough takes save the working-class readers of the Chronicle from wasting their money. After he files his reviews, he often spends the night galivanting at private queer parties or paying for “rough trade” in the park. Certainly dangerous activities no matter who you are in the England of this era. Things change after David Brooke (Mark Strong) takes over following the death of his father, the paper’s longtime publisher.
While Jimmy is about to find out he’s now on a very short leash, one of his critical causalities, stage actress Nina Land (Gemma Arterton), is devastated over his review of her latest performance. Having been the victim of Jimmy’s opinions for a decade, she decides to confront him before he can rip her upcoming turn in a new staging of “Twelfth Night.” Like everyone in this story, however, Nina has her own secrets. She’s recently pulled the plug on a passionate love affair with Stephen Wyley (Ben Barnes), who still pines for her despite being married to David’s daughter Madeline (Romola Garai). Oh, do you see what’s happening there?
Now Jimmy and Nina don’t necessarily bond upon their first in-person encounter, but the former is genuinely affected when he discovers it was his writing that inspired her to become an actor in the first place. And, as you’d expect, all she wants is for him to treat her fairly moving forward. That’s something Jimmy won’t forget or use to his advantage.
When a drunken Jimmy gets arrested for kissing Tom in public, his embarrassed and frustrated new boss has to pull strings to get him out of jail. Within hours David and the paper inform him he has one month’s notice, kicking him to the street and effectively ending his extravagant lifestyle. That is until Tom notices David’s emotional reaction to Nina’s performance during one of Jimmy’s last critic assignments. And just like that, Jimmy is hatching a plan.
To say Farber’s screenplay is plot-heavy is an understatement. You might already be confused by just a trifle of the plot we’ve summarized for this review. But there is an incestuous love triangle at the heart of the melodrama and Farber has to pull a lot of strings to set it up. The problem is having so many of those strings at the forefront of the proceedings makes it a somewhat unwieldy narrative beast for the director to harness. In fact, what carries the film isn’t McKellen’s natural charisma (he’s fine), or even a solid but sadly not spectacular Arterton. Nor is it Farber’s often witty and cutting dialogue (which the movie could use much more of).
Surprisingly, it’s a wonderfully subtle and captivating performance from Strong as a man who is shockingly self-aware of his privilege (we’ll assume this is rare for the era) and more honorable than any other character on screen. Later on, a superb Barnes takes the baton from Strong and becomes an emotional touchstone to get the film across the finish line. Oh right, and did we mention Lesley Manville pops up here and there as Nina’s mother? Or that Barnes’ character is painting a portrait that involves Jimmy? Again, there is so much going on that the British Union of Fascists (the U.K.’s Nazi party at the time) is a key plot point too.
Granted, it’s a lot. So much so that Jimmy’s actual profession becomes almost insignificant to the proceedings. Maybe Marber doesn’t really hate us (not you, me). Maybe it’s the whole critic thing is just a cipher to construct a complicated thriller around. Now that I’ve sat on it for a while, maybe if he did hate us the result might be a wee bit more entertaining. Thank god for actors, I guess. [C-]
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