“The Duke”: suspect’s 61
aters. 86 minutes. In the
A Robin Hood figure polarizes England in “The Duke,” an ambling, sentimental account of the 1961 heist of Francisco de Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London.
The police assume that the thief is a criminal mastermind. The public imagines the villain from Dr. No (1963), who displayed the purloined painting in his lair.
But the man standing trial is a more unusual suspect: a 61-year-old cabdriver, Kempton Bunton (Jim Broadbent), who claims that he swiped the art over frustration that the British government would rather spend money lionizing the dead than lifting up its working class. His ransom notes demand a charitable donation.
(The real painting was returned in 1965; Bunton turned himself in.)
An anti-establishment autodidact with a quick stride and a fast mouth —
“I feel about 23,” he says, and for a moment Broadbent’s gleaming eyes make you believe it — Bunton is a rabble-rouser and a compelling hero for this film by director Roger Michell, who died in September after a career of humanist charmers including “Notting Hill” and “Venus.”
It is a pity that Richard Bean and Clive Coleman’s script mires Bunton in a soggy family drama about an unresolved death; an elder son (Jack Bandeira) who flirts with crime; and a wife, Dorothy (Helen Mirren, so sheepish as to be near invisible), who is humiliated that her husband prefers prison to a stable home.
These rather generic subplots diffuse the movie’s vibrant blue-collar crusade, which gets a boost from a tizzy jazz score. Thankfully, a barrister Jeremy Hutchinson (Matthew Goode) steps in to reward Bunton’s principles with a rousing defense.
Though the climatic court battle feels a tad too inspirational, even Goya might admit that’s just what a flattering portrait does.