‘A Good Liar’ is a mystery-filled showcase for McKellen, Mirren

Posted on November 29, 2019

By MARK VIOLA

It seems hard to believe considering their prolific careers, but Ian McKellen (“The Lord of the Rings”) and Helen Mirren (“Woman in Gold”) had never appeared in the same film together prior to their latest project, “The Good Liar.”

The film is directed by Bill Condon (“Beauty and the Beast”) with a screenplay by Jeffrey Hatcher (“Mr. Holmes”), based on the novel by Nicholas Searle. Although this is a well-made movie with a story that has enough twists and turns that you never feel sure what is going to happen next, everything that works in this movie comes back to the performances from its two leads, who are absolutely fantastic.

The story follows con man Roy Courtney (McKellen), who is so accomplished and sure of his abilities that he often has more than one trick going at a time. In addition to swindling businessmen out of their investments, he also targets older woman, playing on their emotions to syphon their bank accounts dry.

Roy’s latest mark is Betty McLeash (Mirren), a wealthy widow who is charmed by Roy from their first meeting. Slowly, he begins to set the hook, even though Betty’s grandson Stephen (Russell Tovey, “Quantico”) is suspicious of the new man in his grandmother’s life.

That’s pretty much all I want to say about the story, because there are plenty of unexpected developments between Roy and Betty’s first meeting and the film’s shocking conclusion. I will say, about two-thirds of the way through, I thought I had figured out the entire story. In fact, I was so confident that I was almost disappointed I had figured it out so easily. Except I wasn’t right, because I had been fooled by a clever red herring, made all the better by the fact that the scene in particular was still the lynchpin to the entire story, only in a way that wouldn’t be revealed for another 20 or so minutes.

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