THE GOOD LIAR : Tuesday 17th December 2019.

I saw 'THE GOOD LIAR' earlier this week, which is an MA15+ rated American crime thriller and is Directed and Co-Produced by the Oscar winning Bill Condon whose previous Directing credits take in the likes of 1987's 'Sister, Sister' (his debut feature film), 1998's 'Gods and Monsters', 2004's 'Kinsey', 2006's 'Dreamgirls', 'The Twilight Saga : Breaking Dawn - Parts 1 and 2', 2013's 'The Fifth Estate', 2015's 'Mr. Holmes' and 2017's Disney's live action remake of 'Beauty and the Beast'. Here Condon collaborates with Sir Ian McKellen for the third time in the male leading role opposite female lead Helen Mirren. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Nicholas Searle, was released in the UK in early November, in the US in mid-November, and in Australian cinemas at the end of November having taken US$28M off the back of a Production Budget of US$10M, and has garnered mixed or average Reviews along the way so far.

The film opens up with two unconnected ageing people keying in their personal details, likes and dislikes into the same online dating service. It is 2009. Sometime later and a connection has been made, a remote relationship has been established and a rapport has been built. The next step is to meet in person, face to face, and so a date is set over dinner. Here we are introduced to Roy Courtnay (Ian McKellen) and Betty McLeish (Helen Mirren) who have enjoyed a successful first lunch date, during which we learn that Roy's wife passed away three years ago and Betty's husband one year ago. Upon exiting the restaurant, Betty is picked up by her grandson Steven (Russell Tovey) and Roy says he'll catch a train back to his apartment in the city. When Betty is out of view, Roy's friend and colleague Vincent (Jim Carter) picks him up and they drive off together.

As it turns out we quickly discover that Roy is in fact a long term conman who has a successful track record in convincing people to part company with their money off the back of some financial investment scam through deception, creating fake identities and misinformation. Betty is a former Oxford Professor, who has an accumulated wealth of 2.7 million pounds sterling, and as such Roy is practically salivating at the prospect of these easy pickings.

Having spent a day together, Roy puts on a convincing act that he has a dodgy knee, and can barely make it up the stairs to his apartment. Betty takes pity and encourages Roy to stay at her place in the spare room, much to Steven's chagrin, and Betty's disapproval of Steven's mistrust of Roy.

Meanwhile, Roy and Vincent run an investment scam with their mark Bryn (Mark Lewis Jones) and his partner Beni (Lucian Msamati) - using fake Russian investors to part company with UK£800K while the other four each put in a combined UK£200K. The fake Russians however, reneg on the deal as a result of a comment made by Bryn, setting up another meeting at a later date in which Bryn apologises and the four agree to up their investment from UK£50K each to UK£100K as a gesture of their commitment. After the funds are transferred via a sharing of accounts using keypads connected to a bank, and the group are about to toast their success, the meeting is raided by Police leaving Bryn and his colleague to flee the scene. The Police raid is revealed to also be a scam, leaving the group to share the spoils of a UK£200K confidence trick.

One day later on when Roy has seemingly taken up permanent residence in Betty's house, she collapses from a mini-stroke. Her Doctor pays a house visit and says she needs to take it easy, and having suffered a series of these mini-strokes over time, needs bed rest or she could possibly be dead within a year. To aid her recovery, Betty suggests a European holiday taking in Berlin, France and Italy, but kicking off in Berlin. Roy eventually agrees. During the trip, during which time Steven is studying in Berlin and acts as their surrogate tour guide, he speaks in German which Roy seems to understand - and then claims ignorance. Steven takes the couple to a flat that Roy instantly recognises although doesn't let on, and reveals that 'Roy Courtnay' was a young British Army officer who was killed there in 1948 by a Nazi war criminal he was tracking, according to Soviet records. This causes Roy to explain that his real name is/was Hans Taub (Laurie Davisdon), who was Roy's German translator, and that he stole Roy's identity so that he could leave Germany and pass himself off as a British citizen. Betty appears to accept his explanation and dismisses Steven's objections.

Whilst in Berlin, one afternoon when Roy is feeling tired, Betty takes her leave and goes off exploring alone. We see here walk up to an old looking house, that is now a library. Upon her return to the hotel she reveals cuts and grazes to her hands where she seemingly took a fall on a gravel pathway. Roy attended to her bloodied hands, and they agree to return home to England ending their holiday prematurely.

For a while now Roy has been attempting to convince Betty that she should invest some of her money into a sure fire double your money offshore trading account, so that he can secretly scam her out of her life savings. Vincent has been masquerading as Roy's financial advisor and has had several meetings to establish the scam at Betty's home. After returning from Berlin, Roy and Betty plan to transfer their money and to pool their resources into an offshore joint account as recommended by Vincent. Vincent, on the eve of the transfer, suggests to Roy that he should leave at least some of the money for Betty to help with her medical condition, but Roy dismisses the idea and insists that he'll leave Betty financially defrauded just like his previous victims. Vincent reluctantly agrees and the next day bears witness to the couple transferring their money into the joint offshore account, totalling in excess of UK£5M.

As they celebrate their financial union over a glass of champagne, Roy takes a message from his son Robert who is attending a trade fair in London from his home in Australia, and wants to meet with his dad later that evening for dinner. Roy is estranged from his son, disapproving of his lifestyle and the fact that he designs kitchens for a living, but agrees to go and meet his son.

Betty sees Roy off at the train station, and he goes to his apartment and polishes off a bottle of Scotch, with no sign of his son Robert, whom we've worked out by now doesn't really exist. Roy discovers that he no longer has the keypad needed to access their joint account and that he must have left it at Betty's house. He calls the bank seeking to have the funds transferred to another account, but is told that the only way of transferring funds securely is via the keypad, and that the bank will happily dispatch a new keypad but that will take three days to arrive at least. By now Roy is panicking. Roy returns to Betty's house to reclaim it, only to find that the house has been stripped bare of all fixtures and furnishings and Betty waiting for him in a lone armchair in the lounge holding his lost keypad. Betty confronts Roy with the keypad by siphoning off UK£50K into her own private account each time he tells a lie, with the account balance declining rapidly before Roy's very eyes as the untruths come blurting out.

It is at this point that Betty reveals her history to Roy, that including her medical condition, is all fake. Her real name is Lili, and she and Roy have met six decades before as German teenagers in 1943 - when Hans was tutoring her in English. During their last session, however, the fifteen year old Hans raped Lili following a humiliating encounter with her three older sisters a short time earlier. After her parents dismissed Hans from continuing his tutoring lessons, he denounced Lili's father to the German authorities as a traitor for which he was executed for treason - the result of which drove Lili's mother to commit suicide. Following the deaths of their parents, Lili's sisters were killed in an explosion just two weeks before the suicide of Adolf Hitler in a Berlin bunker. After these tragic events, Lili made her own way to England once the war had ended.

Lili goes onto explain that she has been fully aware of his plan to con her out of her savings all along, and how Steven, who is in fact the partner of Lili's real grandson Michael, is quite the private investigator and had managed to track Roy/Hans' criminal history, aided by Lili confirming his identity based on an old locket containing a snippet of Hans' hair and comparing the DNA to a cut of hair she took from Roy, when she was cutting his hair one time. Additionally, she reveals that Vincent had betrayed Roy after being confronted with her knowledge of their crimes, and how as a result, if reported to the authorities, he would languish in jail. A situation that Vincent was understandably keen to avoid. Roy begs for forgiveness and states how much he genuinely loves her. Having transferred all of Roy's money to her own account, Lili prepares to leave the house only for Roy to attack her after locking the door. She manages to ward him off just long enough for her to make a quick phone call alerting Beni and a colleague whom he previously cheated, who were waiting outside. Upon leaving the house, she says that she has left UK£100K in Roy's offshore account, which will reimburse the sum he swindled out of Beni, leaving Roy penniless. Roy is then heard being beaten up by the pair of men.

'The Good Liar' has a plot that is far too convoluted, too complicated and way too detailed to sit within the realms of anything resembling realistic, but is elevated by the noteworthy pairing of McKellen and Mirren whose simple and grounded riffing off each other provides for some moments of levity, emotion and depth that anchors the otherwise implausible cumbersome cat-and-mouse storyline. Ultimately it's a film about buried secrets, lies and deception, revenge and double-cross with moments of unexpected violence thrown in for good measure that for the most part is good fun, but, a far cry from the Hitchcock influences it attempts to emulate. Don't expect too much from this film, and you can easily wait for this one to come along on your small screen streaming service and save yourself the price of cinema entry.

'The Good Liar' warrants three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard, from a potential five.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-