The Duke may superficially seem like old hat, but in its comfortable ways there’s still a strong message.

| May 5, 2022

A charming, understated and completely enjoyable frolic about how ordinary people can do extraordinary things that seems doubly startling because, while seeming implausible, it also happens to be absolutely true.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 4, 2022

It’s a daft, lovely story, and it opens up like a flower – the final half hour is deeply and unexpectedly moving.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 29, 2022

[The Duke] sometimes gets overly sentimental and rose-colored about its “simpler” early 60s milieu, but Broadbent more than carries this homage to the triumph of a little man.

| Apr 28, 2022

This messing around with chronology could feel manipulative if the stakes of "The Duke" were higher but, instead, it's like each revelation is a little gift.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 28, 2022

The Duke is appealing and wayward, too, if also given to both slickness (split screens? really?) and more than a dollop of sentimentality.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 27, 2022

It's all very sweet and light, with a message about the importance of standing up for one's beliefs at its center. Nothing wrong with that at all.

| Original Score: B | Apr 27, 2022

Ultimately, “The Duke” tells an enjoyable real-life story.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 27, 2022

If you want pinpoint accuracy, watch a documentary. If you want to see top-notch actors inhabit characters in genuine and ultimately moving ways, The Duke is a much better option.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 27, 2022

A sweet package made sweeter by two of England’s finest actors.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Apr 26, 2022

This is an unmistakably British import. Its quiet charm stakes a claim for mature viewers but dont mistake "offbeat" for "bland." Theres nothing banal or predictable about this lighthearted tale, which is based on a true story.

| Apr 22, 2022

"The Duke" is completely agreeable, and pleasant, but it could have been more arch or cynical. This film ends up being as likable as its puckish hero, who gets by on his good will.

| Apr 22, 2022

One of the pleasures -- even privileges -- of watching a film like this is seeing what superb actors are able to do with material that doesn’t aspire to greatness. The story is charming, the performances are exceptional.

| Apr 22, 2022

Happily, Michell is more interested in the grifter than the grift. And Broadbent, expanding luxuriously into his ideal leading role, is absolutely delightful.

| Apr 21, 2022

Their touching chemistry does the trick, and Broadbent is darned near perfect as a man whose Robin Hood-like principles won out in the most unlikely of scenarios.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 21, 2022

Bunton is a rabble-rouser and a compelling hero for this film by the director Roger Michell, who died in September after a career of humanist charmers including "Notting Hill" and "Venus." It is a pity that the script mires Bunton in a soggy family drama

| Original Score: C+ | Apr 21, 2022

The theft itself, and the subsequent (overdone) trial scene that functions as its prologue and aftermath, are in many ways secondary to the film’s humane charms. What’s best about The Duke are its witty grace notes.

| Apr 21, 2022

If the film isn’t quite as complicated as one might sometimes wish it to be, that isn’t to say that this unassuming version of its decidedly strange true tale is anything other than agreeable on its own terms.

| Original Score: B- | Apr 20, 2022

The film confirms that one of Michell’s enduring themes was exasperation—an unglamorous emotion, familiar to us all but, unlike rage, seldom given its cinematic due.

| Apr 15, 2022

There's always space in this world for a gentle, affable dramedy starring Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 1, 2022