Review: The Critic — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott

The Critic

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Rating: R

Run Time: 1 hour 35 minutes

Stars: Ian McKellen, Gemma Arterton, Mark Strong

Writer: Patrick Marber (From Anthony Quinn’s novel Curtain Call)

Director: Anand Tucker

Reviewed at the Toronto International Film Festival

 

Many recall with fondness — others with a shudder — the longtime New York Magazine critic John Simon, whose reviews of film and theater were as charitable as a flame thrower directed into a sulfur mine.

Anjelica Huston, he wrote, “has the face of an exhausted gnu.” He described Walter Matthau as “a half-melted rubber bulldog.” Vanessa Redgrave, Simon opined, should vie “for this year’s Homeliness Award.”

I raise the specter of Simon, who died in 2019, because he is most certainly at least partly the model for Jimmy Erskine, Ian McKellen’s acerbic newspaper writer in The Critic, a dark and tragic drama set in London’s between-the-wars theater culture. Feared and loathed by the West End crowd — and beloved by readers who enjoy seeing show biz folk cut down to size — Jimmy is reluctantly nearing the end of his long career, kicking and scratching to remain in his cushy job even as the newspaper’s editors sour on his take-no-prisoners style.

The chink in Jimmy’s asbestos-lined armor is the fact that he is a gay man at a time when such inclinations could land you in prison. What’s more, Jimmy seems to dare London’s more intolerant quarters to make something of it, flamboyantly displaying the sort of behavior observers of the time would expect of a gay man: impeccable dress, over-the-top emotionalism, an endless reservoir of catty insults, a walk so smooth he seems to be gliding a half-inch off the pavement.

But Jimmy’s never been caught in flagrante delicto, and so long as he stays on the right side of the law, his editors have little choice but to continue allowing his special brand of venom to drip off their pages.

Inevitably, Jimmy’s luck runs out: He’s arrested for public indecency. Seizing on the opportunity to fire Jimmy, his editor (Mark Strong, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy) nevertheless gives his star critic four weeks to make his final exit, a grudging gesture to Jimmy’s years of service and still-sizeable fan base.

But Jimmy will not go gentle into that good night. Determined to salvage his career, no matter the cost, he sets out to blackmail his boss. His beyond-sleazy plan: In return for a glowing review, he’ll enlist an up-and-coming actress named Nina Land (fresh-faced Gemma Arterton) to bed the married guy, then threaten to tell his wife if his dismissal is not rescinded.

Nina grudgingly agrees to the scheme. After all, she’s already dating a married artist (Ben Barnes), so she can hardly take the moral high ground, and she really could use the career boost.

Appalled by the whole thing, though, is Tom (now-grown-up Harry Potter costar Alfred Enoch), Jimmy’s longtime live-in love and ostensible clerical assistant. Tom warns Jimmy that he’s venturing into perilous territory, to which Jimmy barks in response, “I’m fighting for my life!”

Of course, “I told you so’s” don’t quite cut it after the whole plan backfires in the most unlikely of manners, leading to a string of progressively awful Greek tragedies befalling one character after another — and leaving Tom to help Jimmy try and clean up the mess.

Insatiably, gleefully gnawing at the scenery, McKellen creates in Jimmy an ancient rat, scurrying for its life through crowded London streets, the teeming newsroom, and his own cluttered apartment. McKellen is always great fun to watch, whether he’s a madman commanding a tank as Richard III or the benevolent elder presiding over the Lord of the Rings trilogy as Gandalf. Here he is the dark star at the center of a whirling galaxy, devouring everything in sight with malevolent gravity before its supernova finale. Director Anand Tucker (Shopgirl, Hilary and Jackie) borrows impressively from the film noir classics of the between-wars era, casting Jimmy as a dangerously unprincipled creature of the night, illuminating him in stark light that scans McKellen’s famously creased face like a beam sweeping across No Man’s Land.

It would be hard to imagine an ending more downbeat than the one concocted here by writer Patrick Marber (Oscar-nominated for Notes on a Scandal) — a coda that actually made me feel a tad guilty for having had so much fun in the hour and a half leading up to it.

Then again, that’s probably the way Jimmy would want it: If he isn’t making you feel at least a little dirty, then he isn’t doing his job.