Following on from his role as a violent career criminal killing and stealing his way through London’s underbelly in the charmingly deranged thriller The Good Liar, Ian McKellen is one-upping himself by playing an even more odious figure: a critic.
In the Hilary and Jackie director Anand Tucker’s hit-and-miss thriller The Critic, Jimmy Erskine is the most feared and famous theatre critic in 1930s London, saving his most savage takedowns for Nina Land (Gemma Arterton), an already unsure leading lady. He takes pleasure in ritually tearing her down, a practice that has further eroded her fragile sense of confidence. As a gay man forever at the mercy of laws that prohibit his very existence, Jimmy is living life on the edge, indulging in rough sex in the park with strangers while showboating his flamboyance in writing. But when his newspaper’s proprietor dies and his son (Mark Strong) takes over, Jimmy is told to be careful, to avoid falling foul of his new boss by cutting down on the cattiness and when his job security becomes even more precarious, he’s forced to turn to Nina for help.
