The Good Liar: Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren - together at last - slum it in a cheesy fraud thriller

By Jim Slotek

Rating: C-plus

A preposterous mess of romance-with-secrets, generations-old closet skeletons and revenge, The Good Liar is the kind of fragrant dramatic cheese that Sidney Sheldon would have squeezed an ‘80s network mini-series out of.

But the never-before-paired screen couple of Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren consume this cheese like so much scenery. There’s nothing like actors with gravitas slumming, all bemused smiles and droll delivery, even as the material descends clunkily into unintentional comedy.

Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen are a romantic older couple with mutual ulterior motives in The Good Liar

Taken from the novel by Nicholas Searle, and directed by Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters, Dreamgirls), The Good Liar is the story of a con, only half of which is delivered up front. In the very first scene, we find that old codger Roy Courtnay (McKellen) is a good liar indeed, filling out an online dating profile, clicking “Non-smoker” and “non-drinker” boxes even as we see him puffing away and taking sips of whisky.

His date, Betty McLeish (Mirren) is a retired former Oxford teacher who is apparently charmed by Roy’s twinkle-eyed codger act. And an act it is, since, away from Betty, we see a foul-mouthed Roy take charge in a series of con-jobs selling fake investments to rich suckers, having people beaten when they cross him, and proving capable of murder.

Which makes Betty his next mark, with only her grandson Steven (Russell Tovey), a historian with a suspicious streak, raising an eyebrow at grand-mum’s hasty romance. When she invites Roy to move into her suburban home after their second date, even the viewer may be left wondering what turnip truck she fell off.

But as Roy and his crony Vincent (Jim Carter) lay their trap for Betty, there are hints of steel in her smile. The Good Liar is the sort of suspense thriller that isn’t very good at faking where it’s going. In bits and pieces, we find out more and more about Roy, but the real-deal with Betty is left for late in the film. The “truth” about everything we’ve been seeing is so implausible that it’s laid out in flashbacks with long passages of exposition and silent visuals. 

It’s never clear how seriously we’re supposed to take The Good Liar. Certainly, there are outright laughs in the last act. And Condon, who’s capable of great subtlety, delivers a mawkish finale with a wartime trauma that is practically glossed over in its haste to finish.

Still, it is a joy to see the two leads work. McKellen hops brilliantly from frail senior to dangerous criminal, acting the role of a character whose whole life is an act.

As for Mirren, she is so amazingly vital, that only a really good liar would ask us to believe she’s a widow, practically on death’s door, following a series of strokes. But then, nothing in The Good Liar is to be believed, and precious little of it is believable.

The Good Liar. Directed by Bill Condon. Starring Ian McKellen, Helen Mirren and Russell Tovey. Opens wide, Friday, November 15.