When it comes to the heist film genre, “based on a true story” isn’t an obvious selling point: knotty crime capers tend to be better the more elaborately and imaginatively concocted they are. The Duke (Amazon) is an exception. The last feature directed by the late Roger Michell, it has a daft underdog story that could have been plucked straight from the brain of Richard Curtis, but just happens to be rooted in fact. Even the name of its true-life protagonist sounds fanciful: Kempton Bunton, a working-class pensioner who, in protest against the TV licence fee imposed by the British government, set out to steal Goya’s painting Portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery.
The reasoning, like many of the plot mechanics here, is better seen than explained. But it makes for a chipper, cheering romp, delightfully performed by Jim Broadbent as Bunton and Helen Mirren as his weary wife, and directed with unassuming, fleet-footed ease by Michell. All in all, it sits on the lightest, brightest end of the heist movie spectrum: there are no unsavoury criminals or grisly outcomes here, just salt-of-the-earth types doing ill-advised deeds with good intentions.
