6/10 What do you get when you combine two British acting legends and a cat and mouse, con man plot? Sadly, you get a decent but very forgettable movie that will entertain you and then quickly leave your mind. No fault goes to our two leads, however. Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen are delightful and McKellen in particular is having a great time here. The two play off of each other very well and everything makes sense once a twist is revealed near the movie’s end. The plot goes in unexpected directions and the final half an hour is rather impressive when we see how everything unfolds. The problems with this movie lie in the fact that so many elements are very vanilla and mediocre such as the direction, score, cinematography, production design, etc. For a couple spending lots of money, the set pieces, costumes and certain scenes in general could have been much more lavish and extravagant and even the color scheme of this movie is rather dull and muted, lacking any color or pizzazz. The other glaring flaw is that the movie drags in certain places and as great as these two actors are, watching two old people talking, taking pills, going for walks, basic Silent Generation activities, etc. is the opposite of thrilling in what is supposed to be a thriller. When the movie switches to our con artist doing shady activities, the movie finally gets a much needed jolt of life but when we aren’t there, we always wish we were. After one of the movie’s ending reveals, we realize that Mirren’s son’s character constantly trying to call McKellen out throughout the movie doesn’t make a ton of sense. I also found it a little hard to believe the amount of power McKellen’s character had and how he was able to get away with things for as long as he did if all it takes is a little research to figure out a great deal of information about him. There are some farfetched elements to the story for sure but you won’t think too much about them until the movie ends and you sit back and reflect on what you just saw. There are a decent number of flashback sequences which I was not expecting and although they added to the movie’s excitement, they felt like they were from a totally different movie. “The Good Liar” ends up being The Mediocre Liar so although there is no rush to see this in theaters, renting this or watching it on a streaming service wouldn’t hurt. Just don’t pay full price on the big screen and get conned out of your money.
#RoyStory / #SchemeGirls / #OnGoldenFond / #TheLordOfTheStings / #ConGirl / #CostarringVincentsPrice
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