The Good Liar – a review

An elderly conman Roy (Ian McKellen) finds that his latest mark Betty (Helen Mirren) is quite rich. This makes the evil entrepreneur in him more than willing to give it his best to unburden her of all that wealth.

Let me start by saying that the poster is actually rather well chosen, on two fronts. First it evokes the feeling of a classical detective the like of Deceived (1992), The Hand that rocks the Cradle (1992) and Single White Female (1992).

Those famous (often 90s) thrillers in which the single white female has to smarten up fast to resist the evil male intruder in her life.

Then there are the colours of black and white. At first glance this is the clear distinction between right and wrong, the villain and the victim.

But, after seeing the movie I have to admit that it also highlights the big problem of the story and thus, as a result, the movie as a whole. Strangely enough I’m accusing The Good Liar of being dishonest to its audience.

The fighting chance in a detective story

S.S. van Dine famously wrote his ‘twenty rules for writing detective stories’ in 1928. The phrase ‘The butler did it’ –I believe- derives from this list as (as rule 11) the writer clearly exclaims his disdain for the notion of someone ‘common’ committing bloody murder.

But, nevertheless, taken with a grain of salt these ‘twenty rules’ still work as a blueprint to this day and age. And one thing is almost hammered home in Dine’s list (as rules 1, 5, 8, 9 and 15 stipulate): the reader should have a sporting chance to solve the crime.

To take Midsomer Murders (or any other crime-of-the-week TV-show for that matter) for example. This show scores high on this list. Every clue is a plain sight and it up to the audience to pay close attention.

But it is human nature to experiment. It is human nature to do something different from time to time. Sometimes even to try to reinvent the wheel as it were.

So throughout crime-fiction history there have been stories in which the ‘who’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ The Alienist (2018) left out the Who until the very last episode. Sherlock’s (2012) death defying leap in The Reichenbach fall (the How) was famously left without a proper explanation. And The Good Liar, I argue, is guilty of leaving out the Why.
weren’t there for the audience to pick up upon. In televised fiction last year’s

Anybody can, at least, sense that there is something amiss between the characters; that neither of them are very truthful. You can feel it in the picture, in every frame. You’ll probably even know how it will all go down and you’ll be right. But still, in the end, you are left empty handed because you didn’t have any access to the smallest morsel of information pertaining to the question: Why.

This wilful choice (derived from the original book by Nicholas Searle I assume) makes The Good Liar and uneven viewing. The movie seduces you, the viewer, to take part in the mystery of solving what is going. Like a peacock spreading its feathers it uses tried and tested cinematic techniques of informing the audience of danger lurking, just letting the camera linger on a character’s face in a room. But at the same time denies the audience to see all of said ‘peacock’. So, in short, what you want, you don’t get.

Genre fatigue

One could easily blame the detective genre for this. After years and years of detective novels, TV-shows and movies (most recently the brilliant Knifes Out (2019)) which were all following Dine’s twenty rules to the tee audiences get alienated when a story tries something different.

Expectations restricting imagination as it were.

But, one could also make the argument, why change a winning formula? Would The Good Liar really have suffered that greatly if the 'why' was brought to the forefront a little earlier than the big finale?

I don’t think so. I actually believe it would make the story work a whole lot better.

At least it would have prepared/guided me a bit for the emotional somersault the Roy character goes through in the finale.

Audiences will always identify with a main character. Even if he or she is a villain. No matter how vile and despicable (often) he is.

But the trick here is to do vilify the villain slowly (like Ian McKellen’s character in Apt Pupil (1998)). Not to, suddenly, spring a whole new level of villainy on our evil protagonist out of the blue.

Basically the finale to The Good Liar was the textbook example of the ‘introduction of the big bad’. In any (action)movie the main bad guy’s introduction is accompanied with him doing something dastardly. Done early the movie can build from that.

But if you’ve already got the audience invested in a character and then, after a full hour and a half, spring a disturbingly dastardly deed on the character without leading into it it alienates the character and the audience is left in limbo.

The only movie this worked in, I think, is Heat (1995) with Tom Sizemore’s character. But he was a side-character, not one of the protagonists. The audience hardly knew the guy so his ‘big dastardly deed’ in the end was a possibility that could come from this character.

Maybe a bit more predictable since any weathered moviegoer/ crime fiction enthusiast now has the 'Why' handed to complete the mental jigsaw.

But, then again, this would also shift focus from the core mystery to the many other wonders that The Good Liar has to offer its audience.

Visually a detective story

The visual flair of The Good Liar is one of the main reasons to see this movie (apart from the obvious two reasons I’ll mention below). Shot in London and Berlin the camera makes good use of showing the beauty of the scenery. It truly is a bit of a tourist folder (complete with British upper-class fashion). But there’s much more. Little shots here and there that elevate the tale and truly making it a colourful feast for the eye.

There’s a brilliant little strip-club scene that is a deliciously lit set. The setting makes all the character on screen grubby and morally grey. The camera, then underlines this with quick successions of shots, just lingering long enough to capture a thoughtful silence or two.

Every set is like this; well chosen and fitting the moment in the movie with the camera subtly underlining what you see instead of distracting from it.

But, of course, the main attraction here are Ian McKellen and Helen Mirror facing off. Both have played baddies. Both have played absolute sweethearts. Both have played strong and powerful. Both have played frail.

It’s clear from the opening credits that these two acting forces are going to dominate every scene that they are in, and they do.

Who can forget Mirren’s deadpan:

“Try the c*ck, Albert. It's a delicacy, and you know where it's been.”

In The cook the thief the wife the lover (1989).

Playing both weak and empowered at times, relying on each other as they are building their characters. Just a moment here and there with a changing look. It deepens the mystery (which is only in the way anyhow) and enriches the characters.

The Good Liar shouldn’t be seen for the mystery it promises. You just have to enjoy this thriller for the two acting giants having a go at each other. Shot beautifully this movie gives all the room for its two stars to shine and to show us which one of the two is the better liar. (That’s a lie, they both are).

Tick, tick, BOOM: Bomber movies.

A dark, cramped space. Before the hero is a strange box filed with numerous tangled wires connecting explosives to a clock counting down. He's holding a cheap cutter in one hand and a flashlight in the other. He is sweating. He is nervous. He needs to cut a wire, red or blue before the timer runs out. Which one will he choose?

A conundrum hilariously spoofed in Cats & Dogs (2001).

In the late eighties, early nineties, bomber-movies became a thing. With which I mean a movie about a mad bomber leaving time-detonated explosives around and it’s up to the heroes of the movie to dismantle them before the time is up!

Movies like these were done before, like the famous Rollercoaster (1977), but in the nineties something caused a quick succession of movies to be made about this subject. It probably had something to do with the Troubles in Ireland coming to an end. But that’s just me having a guess.

There are numerous examples from the nineties like Live Wire (1992), The Final Cut (1995),

Which, by including the (sexual) fantasy of the ‘human bomb’,
created quite the effective metaphor of the inevitability of death.

Bombmeister (1992) and, of course, Blown Away (1994) and Speed (1994). These last two are interesting because these two movies ‘broke the mould’ as it were.

It’s all about the bomb, not the bomber.

You see, bomber-movies aren’t –almost by definition- that interested in the persona of the bomber. These kinds of movies prefer to focus on the ones defusing the bombs and the (psychological) peril they find themselves in at that time, not necessarily the demented reasoning of the culprit placing those devices. This guy usually gets shot down (almost as an afterthought) the minute the last bomb has been defused (The Kingdom (2007), The Hurt locker (2008)).

This notion, however, shifted a bit when Blown Away and Speed came to show. Now suddenly these mad-bombers had a reasoning for their actions. And because of their presence the whole situation of defusing bombs became far more perilous. Suddenly the vengeful act of the ‘mad-bomber’ was personal. Meaning: the bomber knows/knew how the ‘defuser’ thinks.

But, to be honest, these criminals always remain rather two-dimensional in character. Their motives never anything more than ‘classical’ revenge.

The bomber-movie, therefore, I consider a full 100% different than, let’s say, the serial-killer movie in which the villain and his motives are important. In short: The bomber-movie is all about preventing the end result. When other movies are all about understanding the villain.

One could say that in bomber-movies spectacle takes the forefront over narrative.

It’s all about the bomber, not the bomb.

To take a little side-track I should point out the main MacGuffin of Face/Off (1997). In this movie the
evil Castor Troy has placed a bomb somewhere and it is up to the detective to pull off some shenanigans to find out where the bomb is and diffuse it.

An interesting part about this movie is that here the bomb is the afterthought. The whole defusing-scene leaves the audience utterly unimpressed. This because the movie (rightfully so) prefers to focus all its attention on the dynamic between the criminal and the detective.

As such the ‘bomb-element’ could be replaced with any other cataclysmic event. Be it poisonous gas, a terrorist attack, evil grandmothers, it doesn’t matter. The movie wouldn’t change.

Usually, in movies that have somewhat of a ‘bomber-movie’-plot point in them timing is, rather more, ‘lucky’.

Like the pitch, perfect, phone call in Law Abiding Citizen (2009).

Or, the perfectly timed (no time for a simple warning phone call) car bomb

in The Dark Knight (2008).

So, in short the formula appears to be this: more focus on the bomb(s) equals less focus on the bomber. More focus on the bomber equals less focus on the bomb.

The bomber is dead…tick, tick, the bomb.

The interesting thing about bomber-movies is that the bomber can be dead and still his ‘legacy’ remains a danger. So the bomber-movies have a ‘trump-card’ to play around with. Now there isn’t a mad man with his finger on a button. Rather the mad-man has pushed the button already and it is up to our heroes to save the day before time runs out.

This creates a second schism in bomber movies (apart from the ‘focus’ mentioned above). Do you tell the audience WHEN the bomb is going to go off or do you suffice by merely telling the audience that there IS a bomb?

Countdown to zero.

Do you remember James Bond defusing the bomb in Goldfinger (1964), of course it was going to land on 007-seconds left.

The big trope in bomber-movies is the ‘countdown’ before something terrible happens. To make this happen you need two things: a clock or an action (per example: picking up a phone in Payback (1999)). And an audience who knows the requirements for the bomb to go off.

To take the classical example of a bomb set to go off at noon. Invented by Hitchcock -and often referred to by him when he explained ‘Suspense’-, for his film Sabotage (1936).

I’m not quite sure if I’m correct here. But I think I am.

In this movie the criminal gives a bomb to a boy, whilst telling the boy that the package has to be
delivered at the town hall in the office of the burgomaster at twelve noon.

The boy goes on his way and, since he is a young boy, gets distracted all the TIME.

Every single scene after the boy receives this ‘package’, Hitchcock included a clock. He informed the audience of the bomb in the package and the fact that it’ll blow up at twelve-o-clock. So each clock the audience sees is horror. As the boy visits the market, watches a display at a window. In the end the boy boards a bus and is almost out of time. Yet, there is hope. He might still make it.

And if he does: wilfully condemning the people at the town hall to death! (Because the audience never ‘met’ them).

A moviemaker can stretch this out for ages. In fact, various movies tried to prolong this ‘feeling of tension’ throughout the running time (like Wedlock (1991)).

But, to be clear, this ‘trick’ only works for so long. However, if you don’t know the timer you can prolong the feeling of dread a whole lot longer.

Countdown to when?

The short period of bomber-movies in the nineties are interesting because halfway through the hype Hollywood reasoned that it was, in fact, rather silly to have a countdown clock on each and every bomb. Because, let’s be reasonable here, why WOULD a bomber let the defuser know the time left?

So a second genre of the bomber movie came to the foreground. Stories that merely told the audience that there was a bomb set to go off, but not when.

This paved the way to a new form of creating tension. Informing the audience that something is going to blow up during the duration of the movie creates an uneasiness that lingers. Not necessarily edge of your seat tension but rather a constant feeling of dread. This tension was masterfully used in the (underrated) Arlington Road (1999).

And like Hitchcock years before moviemakers weren’t afraid to let the thing go off in The sum of all fears (2002).

No more bombs?

Nowadays the bomber-movie plot- elements have gone away a bit. I blame fatigue of the subgenre and, of course, real life terrorism for this. But still the techniques remain.

Thanos getting hold of all the stones in Avengers: Infinity War (2008) is a clear usage of the ‘bomber movie without a countdown technique’ and when he finally gets hold of the stones the movie shifts over in ‘countdown territory’ with Captain America trying to prevent Thanos from snapping his fingers.

And to be honest, that’s fair. A bomber movie is only successful if the bomb doesn’t go off (a happy ending). But the audience flocks to the cinema to see stuff getting blown up. Basically a bomber-movie is a movie that promises what it isn’t allowed to deliver. Tangled wires indeed.

Bomb defused!

Bomber movies, or movies that use –at one time or another- the elements from bomber movies want the audience to experience the dread of a possible cataclysm devised by a person who isn’t present when it happens.

Bomber movies are the ultimate anti-James Bond movie because the main villain doesn’t matter. He’s not there at the scene of the crime. He’s either dead or behind the scenes contemplating.

The reason bomber movies, or elements of the bomber movies, work is because it brings to the forefront a sense of imminent danger that we, the audience, love to see defused.

Bomber movies give the audience a thrill ride because ‘we all know’ that danger is lurking around every corner and this, particular, danger has a timetable.