![]() Stealing the portrait might just get the attention of the nation.īefore the plot gets anywhere near its Thomas Crown-esque middle stretch, in which the painting is pinched in a nocturnal raid via the gallery bins, co-writers Clive Coleman and Richard Bean take time to set up Bunton and his long-suffering wife, Dorothy (Helen Mirren, dialling back to give extra space to her co-star), as a couple in working-class Newcastle. Access to the telly is, he reasons, the only link many elderly citizens have with their fellow Brits – and the world at large. ![]() With the experience of lockdowns and that Clap for Carers communal spirit fresh in all of our minds, it’s dead easy to rally behind Bunton’s quixotic efforts to secure free TV licences for pensioners – and even his roundabout route to wanted art thief. ![]() The setting harks back to an era of British life that suddenly feels a lot less distant. ![]() The Duke is a film that has one national treasure (Jim Broadbent) playing another national treasure (Geordie cabbie, social campaigner and wannabe playwright Kempton Bunton), who was accused of stealing another national treasure (Goya’s ‘Portrait of the Duke of Wellington’) from the National Gallery in 1961. ![]()
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