As Boomers grow older and continue to be an in-theater audience for movies where the characters don't wear spandex, the geezer movie is becoming a recognized genre. The Good Liar is the latest example, but unfortunately two excellent old pros are done in by a disappointing script.
The driver of the plot is Roy (Ian McKellan) as an elderly English con man who, among other scams, romances lonely widows of means and fleeces them out of their life savings. His newest target is Betty (Helen Mirren), a recently widowed Oxford history professor who he meets on an internet dating site for the mature person seeking companionship. The first two-thirds of the movie is Roy working the con by slowly insinuating himself into Betty's heart, house and considerable bank balance. He's simultaneously working another fraudulent investment scheme that shows us he's not only good at his work but willing to do whatever it takes, up to and including homicide.
Nevertheless, you anticipate that things are not what they seem because Betty is played by Helen Mirren, who comes across as simply too smart, too self-possessed and too aware to be the sucker Roy thinks she is. Mirren has a history of playing smart, formidably dangerous older women like retired intelligence agents, and the actress's background affects how we see her character in this picture. A less well known performer would have been more convincing and generated more tension as a likely victim. We keep waiting to see how Betty is playing Roy when he thinks he's playing her, and these two fine performers keep us hanging on to find out what's really going on.
Then, in the last third of the movie, we do find out, and the whole thing falls flat. The two turn out to have a back story from their long ago youth that she knows and he doesn't realize. Told in flashback, the back story unfortunately manages to be both melodramatic and uninvolving; we don't really connect to the two of them as young people in the mid-1940s. It might have worked better if it had been intercut with the present day story, like a dark version of The Notebook, instead of delivered as a data dump by the victorious Betty.
The twist ending has zero tension, partly because we've seen it coming and partly because Betty sandbags Roy completely and there's no real contest. After Roy gets his comeuppance there are two heavy handed, moralizing coda scenes that could better have been left out, leaving Roy's aftermath to our imagination. Mirren and McKellen do all that could be done with the script, but the material lets them down. Despite the quality lead performances, I'd leave it to streaming at most.
