The Duke review – jaunty and moving recreation of a ridiculous real-life heist

Tragically, The Duke serves as the final film from director Roger Michell after his sudden, shocking death in September, but there is a light to be gleaned from this darkness – this is a delightful film to say goodbye with. Nimble, clever, warming and British to the core, it's a fitting coda to a career that was all those things and more. It takes a romp of a story and infuses it with a deep pathos, all while its runtime barely scrapes past the 90-minute mark.

Based on a larger-than-life true story, The Duke follows Kempton Bunton (Jim Broadbent), a Newcastle cabbie who, in 1961, stole the Francisco Goya portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in an act of protest against the UK government paying £140,000 to keep it in the country instead of spending that money on vulnerable people. The Kempton we meet is an admirable idealist, determined that the country should revolve around community and people helping one another, and his plan is to use the proceeds from selling the painting back to the gallery to buy TV licenses for the isolated and elderly, to keep them connected to society.

It’s a jaunty premise on paper, an old coot sticking it to the authorities against a backdrop of post-war Britain that wouldn’t look out of place in a Hovis advert, but Michell and writers Richard Bean and Clive Coleman turn this on its head by making The Duke, fundamentally, about grief. Though you feel that Kempton is earnestly invested in his various campaigns, you grow to realise that their true purpose is to fill the void left by the death of his 18-year-old daughter Marian, a loss that has informed the entire Bunton family dynamic for over a decade.

Kempton’s wife Dorothy (Helen Mirren) is crippled by grief, able to get by day to day but terrified of addressing any emotional realities lest the whole façade comes crumbling down, while his charming son Jackie (Dunkirk’s Fionn Whitehead) hopes to escape the country on one of the boats he spends his days repairing. Perhaps more than anything else, the thrill of possessing the stolen painting serves as a distraction, the loss of Marian replaced, even just briefly, by the competing sense of triumph and terror as the police sweep the country looking for it.

Broadbent and Mirren are both terrific, each carrying their grief in different ways, some more subtle than others, but also finding joy and laughter. A moment in which the pair sing and dance while waiting for the kettle to boil is a tremendously warm study of a long-term, loving marriage, and the climactic sequence of Kempton’s trial is both funny and touching, hinged on his humanist life philosophy – Matthew Goode also does a nice job as Kempton’s posh but empathetic lawyer. Some of the other side characters feel pretty extraneous, including one outright misfire performance, but Michell immerses you in the Bunton family home – whenever they share a breakfast, a beer, or a nice cup of tea, you feel like you’re right there with them.

Quick of wit and fleet of foot, The Duke adeptly balances its heavier themes with its inherently caper-ish story, never getting bogged down, but using the weight of loss to grant its more outlandish moments a more grounded impact. Silly but not shallow, and moving without being self-serious, it’s the kind of film custom-built for family viewing on a Sunday night, lifting you into the next week with a wink and a smile.

The Duke is released in UK cinemas on 25 February.