Cert: 12 | ★★★★★

Dame Helen Mirren — soon to be seen as Golda Meir in a new biopic charting the life of the former Israeli prime minister — gives one of her best performances in writer-director Roger Michell’s very last film. In it, Michell (Notting Hill, The Mother, Enduring Love) who died suddenly last year, tells the incredible real life story of the theft of a Goya painting in the early 1960s.
Kempton Bunton (Jim Broadbent) is a typical English eccentric. After a short sojourn behind bars over his refusal to pay his TV licence — he claims to only watch ITV since modifying his set to bypass the BBC — the autodidact political campaigner and all around public nuisance has promised his long-suffering wife (Mirren) to be on his best behaviour.
Despite his best intentions, he soon involved in one of the most daring art thefts in British history. On a trip to London, the sexagenarian steals Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery; the painting had recently been bought by the state to keep it in the country. Hilarity ensues when, aided by his youngest son Jackie (Fionn Whitehead), our hapless hero attempts to bargain with the police for the painting’s safe return.
Michell and co-writers Richard Bean and Clive Coleman have created a beautifully written and deftly executed period piece full of quirks and impressive attention to detail. The Duke not only does a great job in reacquainting us with this truly extraordinary story, but it also does it with a huge amount of tenderness.
It’s funny and thought-provoking without ever veering on the saccharine. Elevated by two peerless performances from Mirren and Broadbent, The Duke is Michell’s best work yet, which makes it even more of a tragedy that he is no longer here to see the joy it brings.