I am, unfortunately, on Tinder and Bumble, so when The Good Liar (dir. Bill Condon) started with the two main characters, Roy Courtney (Sir Ian McKellen) and Betty McLeish (Dame Helen Mirren), purposefully filling out their online profiles incorrectly, I thought maybe this film might be treading on some familiar territory for me; because I have found that the online dating world is full of subterfuge, mendacity, and blatant lying.
The film follows Roy, who is a confidence man, a grifter, and early on in the film he has set his sights on the sweet and innocent Betty. Without giving the film away that is basically all there is to it, there isn’t a lot of depth to it, similar to some of the dates I have been on.
The film moves at a decent pace so it’s not boring, the cast is great, the two leads obviously still have all their skill, dexterity, and subtlety in their performance. The supporting cast does a great job to complement and counterpoint the energy in the scenes. It felt like it would have been a fun set to be on. However, this doesn’t excuse lazy writing which ultimately let the film down. I say writing, as in the story, but it could have been the execution of the story, either way, what they did, didn’t work.
The film uses too many cliches and withholds too much information in an attempt to be mysterious. There is double and triple crosses, nazis, stolen identities, a huge reveal that was obvious from the start. You know what was going to happen but not the why or the how.
With the obvious issues of a major chunk of the creative team, The Usual Suspect, was amazing as it gave you all the information and yet, you couldn’t put the pieces together until it was all explained at the end and you thought wow, how did they pull that off?
The Good Liar suffers from Fantastic Beastitis, wherein, there is a tsunami of exposition at the very end that introduces all new information that explains what happened. This does not provide you with a sense of wonder and revelation about how they snuck all those clues past you because there were no clues. There is no catharsis to your journey as a filmgoer.
This film is very similar to most of my tinder dates, there is a lot of expectation, a few nice moments, but no real connection, so ultimately, if you look through the facade there isn’t a lot of substance and you leave slightly disappointed.
Nov 26, 2019
Luke McMeeken-Ruscoe