In Thelma, out now, Malcolm McDowell does not play one of the dazzling antiheroes which either made his name – in If…., O Lucky Man! and A Clockwork Orange – or helped propel his turn-of-the-century career revival, with Gangster No 1 and 2003’s I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead.
Instead, he plays the pitiful owner of a suburban bric-a-brac shop who, to keep the lights on, has a side hustle in swindling vulnerable pensioners out of large sums by pretending to be a lawyer who needs paying now for errant grandchildren’s counsel.
