This is one of those snappy, well-formed Brit-coms that one expects to see reworked as a Full Monty- or Kinky Boots-style Broadway show.
Inspired by the couldn’t-make-it-up historical theft of Goya’s portrait of The Duke of Wellington from London’s National Gallery, The Duke concerns Kempton Bunton, a straight-talking, socialist taxi driver from Newcastle and a role that Jim Broadbent was surely born to play.
As the film opens it’s 1961 and Bunton’s primary adversary is the television licence inspector. Having doctored his television set to receive only ITV, the self-styled working-class hero has no mind to pay the BBC for their services and has mounted a prolific letter-writing campaign to abolish the licence fee for senior citizens. His mouth repeatedly gets him in trouble with his charlady wife, Dolly (Helen Mirren), and various employers. “We’ve had complaints. One: you talk too much and two: it’s utter bollocks. So you’re fired,” says the manager at his cab firm in the first of various adverse responses to Bunton’s anti-authoritarian antics.
The screenplay, by West End veterans Richard Bean and Clive Coleman, creates a cosy English world where people sing Jerusalem, dance around the kitchen to Gracie Fields’s A Nice Cup of Tea, and form such warm cross-class friendships as Mrs Bunton does with the “respectable” councillor’s wife who employs her.
There’s the hint of twinkling roguery around one of the Buntons’ adult sons, but that has nothing on the protagonist’s theft of the Goya painting, an artwork he holds for ransom, in the hope of redistributing the money – with a nod to Robin Hood – among the needy.
Director Roger Michell, who died last year, had a knack for finding levity in such unlikely places as the Troubles (Titanic Town) and gentrification (Notting Hill). A backstory concerning the loss of Bunton’s daughter and the character’s committed class consciousness are eclipsed by the film’s merriment. A late courtroom scene featuring playful performances by Broadbent, Matthew Goode and a rowdy gallery is as irresistible as it is treacly.
