This is, sadly, the very last film directed with the aid of using Roger Michell, the British movie and theater director who, beginning withinside the late `90s, labored pretty fruitfully withinside the geographical regions of mainstream romantic comedy (“Notting Hill”) and drama (“Changing Lanes”) and can also hit it nearly out of the park with edgier fare like “Enduring Love” and “Venus” because the early aughts went on. Don`t sleep on his 1993 British miniseries “The Buddha of Suburbia,” the primary of numerous collaborations with author Hanif Kureishi. “The Duke” isn't his all-time-first-class picture, however, it`s a totally sturdy one, and it showcases his numerous strengths as a filmmaker as an alternative nicely. 
 The film is primarily based totally on a true, and certainly extraordinary caper: the 1961 robbery from the National Gallery of a Goya portrait, painted around 1812, of the Duke of Wellington. Jim Broadbent, honestly thrilled together along with his meaty role, performs Kempton Bunton, an enlightened operating guy in Newcastle on Tyme whose particular and fervent ideas regarding the rights of the decreased training and the aged continuously get him fired from anything activity he manages to procure. (First, he`s a cab driver, then pushing loaves approximately at a bread factory.) He`s additionally a novice playwright. Much to his spouse Dorothy`s consternation, certainly considered one among his topics is the death of their youngsterager daughter. 
 Richard Bean and Clive Coleman`s script introduces us to Kempton in the courtroom docket for the robbery, after which is going six months again to provide a portrait of the guy`s eccentric feel of activism. A couple of inspectors come round to his house. Seems he has a tv withinside his own circle of relatives' flats. But he hasn`t been given a BBC license, which becomes required at the time. Well, Kempton explains, at the same time as he does certainly have a tv, he has eliminated from it the coil that lets in the reception of the BBC. No BBC, no license, he explains. He insists the charge is an unfair tax. And at the same time as he`s getting on in years himself, he thinks that the charge needs to be waived for the aged who may not be capable of difficulty finding the money for it. 
 Later withinside the film, while the robbery has passed off and investigators are inspecting Kempton`s “ransom” note—he`ll go back the portray in trade for cash to pay for a rating of fees—a girl inspecting the written needs calls Kempton “a Don Quixote type.” Exactly, and with all of the electricity too. As Dorothy, Helen Mirren superbly conveys each the exasperation and love the person feels for Kempton, at the same time as Broadbent makes Kempton each sort of admirable and a bit ridiculous. 
 If you`ve ever visible his documentary “Nothing Like A Dame,” launched right here as “Tea With the Dames,” which chronicled conversations among the Dames Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Eileen Atkins, and Joan Plowright, you realize that Michell cherished and respected actors. So it`s rarely sudden that the film is superbly acted from the pinnacle all of the manners down. Fionn Whitehead is remarkably ingratiating as Kempton`s teenage son, who believes in his dad completely—certainly, extra completely that we`re to start with shown. And Matthew Goode is drolly understated as Kempton`s lawyer, who finishes up very amazed with the aid of using the jury`s verdict. 
 The tempo is spanking and Michell does a few cunning misdirections, so as to speak, that provides detail of the thriller to the scenario. Tidy however rarely pat, “The Duke” is a sophisticated desirable time in the movies.