The Good Liar Works Because of McKellen and Mirren

The Good Liar (2019)

Directed by Bill Condon

Warner Brothers, 109 minutes, R (violence, brief nudity)

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One of the small pleasures of movie-watching is coming across a film that only works because of its principals. The Good Liar is an acidic double-cross duet in the very best British style. It is made so by great actors who can cover holes in the plot, and it scarcely gets much better than Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren. 

We know from the outset that Roy Courtnay (McKellen) is a con man. He and his partner Vincent (Downton Abbey’s Jim Carter) run scams that separate fools from their money through elaborate fake identity and money-transfer scenarios. In fact, we first meet them as they are about to fleece Bryn (Mark Lewis Jones), a toffee-nosed high-flyer with more dosh than common sense. But Roy’s favorite swindle is draining accounts of rich widows. He even trawls dating Websites in search of prey. That’s how he meets Betty McLeish, a retired Oxford history professor. The first thing they learn about each other is that they both used fake names on the site.

Roy will draw from his usual bag of tricks to ingratiate his way in Betty’s home and life, but it seems as if old Roy might actually be falling for Betty–and vice versa. Her grandson Steven (Russell Tovey) tries to warn her that he not only smells a rat but has some evidence he dug up–he’s a Ph.D. student in history–but Betty tells him it’s none of his business. Roy is certainly spending Betty’s money, but he’s so charming that she hardly cares. What’s the use of money if you can’t blow it? Does Roy finally know a good thing when he sees it, or is he setting her up for an even bigger score?

The Good Liar is a who-do-you-believe film. It’s adapted from a Nicholas Searle novel, so there are only a couple of ways all of this can play out. Give director Bill Condon for knowing what he had and letting McKellen and Mirren make us believe in it. Would that he had been slightly more demanding of Jeffrey Hatcher’s screenplay, which is over stuffed and rockets us from place to place and jumps time periods. I haven’t read Searle, but I assume all of the film’s detail is in the book. The film, though, is decidedly a situation in which less would be more. There are times in which The Good Lair feels like a feast in which the food keeps coming even though we are stuffed. In this case, all we want the main course: McKellen and Mirren.

Luckily Condon pulls back at the right moment and lets them go at it. McKellen and Mirren are so skilled that they make us stop thinking about the implausibility of some of the background detail. In essence, they force us to suspend disbelief. Each plays a graying elder who lives each day as if each knows their current fling might be their last. They keep us off balance because they are old, but also because they are old pros. It’s eyes to the front when they are on screen at the same time. What details? We just want to know what will happen next.

It’s quite possible that The Good Liar really isn’t that good of a movie and that the ongoing pas de deux makes it better than it has any right being. My advice is to allow yourself to drown in this tart battle of the sexes. It could have easily been a stage show rather than a film, but does anything top the irony that we the audience are double-crossed in a film about double-crossing?

Rob Weir