This story has fascinated England.
So much so that she ended up in a James Bond.
The hero is a Robin Hood of the 1960s, a sixty-year-old taxi driver as funny as he is eccentric: Kempton Bunton, embodied with great charm by a Jim Broadbent at the top of his game.
Coming from the working class, this eccentric retired character lives in Newcastle with his wife, Dolly (excellent Helen Mirren), and his unemployed grandson.
In the district, vans equipped with radars control the households which have a television set, so that they fulfill the royalty.
This is an intolerable injustice for this altruistic man.
Why is Her Most Gracious Majesty's government going after ordinary people for an abusive tax?
According to him,
“TV is the modern cure for loneliness, and as such it should be free for seniors
.
»
Demonstrations where he often ends up alone...
Talkative, always ready to get on his high horse, Bunton is a cheerfully rebellious spirit.
This sly Cockney writes plays, all of which are rejected by the BBC.
It must be said that he prefers Chekhov to Shakespeare.
He gets carried away at the slightest injustice, thus being kicked out of an industrial bakery by a military manu for having defended a Pakistani colleague who is the victim of racial discrimination.
All this does not discourage our hero.
To the point of organizing demonstrations where he often ends up alone... And of igniting ridiculous petitions which will only be signed by a few passers-by in the rain at the end of the market.
Panache and volubility
The story could have ended there if the National Gallery in London had not orchestrated a thundering hype around the portrait of the Duke of Wellington painted by Goya.
To prevent it from ending up in the private collection of an American billionaire, the Crown acquired it for the tidy sum of 140,000 pounds sterling.
It's too much for this modern Don Quixote.
He improvises as a Sunday burglar and ends up stealing the famous painting of the "duke" from the nose and beard of the museum's security guards.
A sequence as funny as incredible!
Bunton then sends a ransom demand to the authorities, threatening to return the painting only on the express condition that the government make television free for the elderly!
Without knowing it, this harmless pensioner unleashed a media and police storm.
Quickly, he becomes the most wanted man of all the police forces in Great Britain.
What amuses him, even if under his apparent good nature Bunton hides a sadness linked to a family drama that has never been digested.
His trial will be like the man, comical and often hilarious.
Sparkling atmosphere
Led with panache and volubility by the late Roger Michell, the filmmaker died in 2021,
The Duke
mixes with a totally British know-how the social cinema of a Ken Loach with the carelessness of English comedy.
The director of
Royal Weekend
or
Love at first sight in Notting Hill
was able to immerse himself with delight in the sparkling atmosphere of this Great Britain at the dawn of the Swinging Sixties, between Beatles and James Bond (the Goya painting stolen is found immortalized in the first James Bond, hanging in the home of Dr No)… As for Jim Broadbent, veteran English actor, seen in
Harry Potter
,
Indiana Jones
,
The Iron Lady
or
Another Year
, he finds here a role to his measure and carries with an immense talet this irresistible comedy
The Duke
, on DVD/Blu-ray, from Pathé Distribution.
Bonus, making-of module.
Based on a true story.