THE GOOD LIAR: NOT WHAT I THOUGHT, BUT BETTER
The Good Liar, a film written by Jeffrey Hatcher & directed by Bill Condon. 2019.
Spoilers
Ya’ll thought this was going to be a Knives Out review, didn’t you? Yeah, me too. I mean, I’ve got that draft open and waiting, but then I stopped by the theater again for no really good reason, and ended up seeing The Good Liar. And let me tell you, I genuinely can’t stop thinking about it. So Knives Out will have to wait.
Like a true millennial in 2019, I decided to see this movie based on one small, square ad promoted on Instagram. Look, you put Sir Ian McKellen and Russell Tovey in one movie together, and that’s all I need to know. I’m there. The algorithm clearly knows how to get me. I didn’t even search up the full trailer, I just went.
Because of that, I had no clue what to expect. From the tiny trailer I watched, I gathered it would be a good-natured caper that turned into a battle of wits between two equally-talented and cunning cons-people.
And, I mean, it was, but it was also so much more.
We got a survivor story! A WWII story! A female character finally making peace with her past story! A rapist getting a comeuppance story! And I thought it was just going to be a crime thriller!
We got kick-ass elderly representation. We got queer representation. We got strong, well-written female representation. We got so much more than that small trailer could have ever hinted at. And I loved it.
Look, was it the best movie? No. Honestly, as a crime thriller, I think it fails. The plot is slow. The thefts – which take up a good portion of time onscreen – involve less running and more limping, less sneaking around and more manipulating conversations while sitting around a table holding large calculators.
Which is so unbelievable, by the way. Who does their banking like that? With their entire account in a giant calculator? Are there people who really use those? Is that realistic? Is it safe?
I mean, no, I guess not.
But what the genuine heck? I find it so hard to believe a company is actually spending money to produce oversized calculators capable of accessing all of someone’s account data and then spending even more money to ship them out to clients. I just, I can’t. Maybe it’s a British thing. Maybe I’m just so used to mobile banking on my phone I can’t picture the physical equivalent of it.
But anyways, believable plot devices or not, an exciting crime they do not make.
I get it, the title of the film is The Good Liar. With an emphasis on lying and spin and accentuated fluff meant to encourage people to give their money away. I get it, I do. But once the story established that that was the con, couldn’t we have spent time somewhere other than the kitchen table?
It’s not like the actors were incapable of thrilling sequences. Hell, McKellen’s Roy pushed someone into an oncoming train. We got a cliche beatdown in the butcher’s. And Dame Helen Mirren crushed every scene she was in, deftly portraying Betty in such a subtle, controlled way that allowed us to know something was up even as Roy underestimated her character again and again.
Look, I’m a sucker for a good assumed-female-frailty-used-as-a-weapon story. I live for those. And this movie delivered that so, so well.
I wish we spent more time with Mirren’s character. We didn’t need to, of course, because as I said, her acting showed the audience exactly what we needed to know. Of course she knew the guy in the car. That was obvious in her face and huffy departure. Of course she didn’t “take a tumble and fall down” after going off on her own. Those shaky hands held more than a scrape with the ground. Of course she knew what he was doing. You could see it hidden in her eyes every scene they spent together.
She played this part perfectly. It’s funny to read reviews that state Mirren played a damsel in distress with no real influence on the plot, because they’re doing the exact same thing Roy did: ignored her. Wrote her off as useless and unimportant and as an object to be walked over.
Betty tricking Roy is not a surprise ending. Anyone who has ever paid a shred of attention to a woman would have seen her body language saying things her voice didn’t. And I love how loudly this movie shouts: pay attention to female characters!
If you thought Betty being behind the true con was a shock, here’s a tip: women are just as exciting and important to watch. Value their influence on screen and in your life.
But for those of us who figured out quite quickly there was more to Betty than meets the eye, I think the plot could have spent more time hinting at their backstory together. We get hints of Roy’s unsavory past, we know he’s tied to the war in some way, thanks to Russell Tovey’s character Steven. But there’s absolutely nothing to connect Betty to the German backdrop.
We didn’t need all the establishing scenes of how vile and crooked a person Roy is. Trust me, we got it. What we don’t get is anything that even slightly points to Betty and Roy having spent time together in the past. And c’mon, where’s the fun in that? We want to guess what happens! But we can’t do that without proper foreshadowing, planning, and hinting.
As it stands, the twist at the end is too convenient. It needed setup. I know they wanted it to be a surprise, but I’m certain the script could have given us glimpses into Betty’s background to make the connections ourselves without them explicitly coming out and revealing it early.
If they had only started establishing it sooner, instead of a singular flashback scene at the end, it would’ve been perfect. The movie would have come together. But it falls just slightly flat – and not because the twist is a rape, as a few reviews I’ve seen online have said.
Personally, that rape reveal gave The Good Liar an entirely new meaning. Betty isn’t just another weak female character, and she’s not just another conwoman. She isn’t doing this for fun. She’s a survivor, and she’s stronger than everything in her past.
And you know what? Even after everything he had done to her, everything he had done to other women, and everything she knew he was about to try and do, she still gave him another chance. She gave him a chance to be good for once in his life. She gave him an out, and that means so much to me. She remained, no matter how horrible her past, no matter how much she suffered, a decent human being.
She lost so much, yet still gave him a chance to prove he may have changed. His downfall could have been avoided, but nope, he was going to take her for all she had.
I loved it. I loved the comeuppance. I loved his cockiness getting knocked down. I loved how Betty grew to have a family she can look out for, even after everything Roy had done to destroy her first one. I love how she got a happy ending. That was everything to me. I wasn’t expecting such an emotional payoff, but it was everything I could’ve hoped for.
I just wish we could’ve spent less time through Roy’s lens and more through Betty’s, since she’s an infinitely more interesting character.
But missing plot setups aside, McKellen and Mirren were both incredible, and we all know I love Russell Tovey. This movie is a treat just to see the three of them acting together.
So, yeah. I wouldn’t say The Good Liar is the best movie I watched this year. I wouldn’t say it’s perfect, or anywhere near. And it definitely would have benefitted from a (cough, female, cough) writer willing to spend less time on Roy and more on Betty.
But I can honestly say that I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since I watched it, and that Betty’s 60-years-coming revenge over a man who did her and her family wrong is worth the hour and a half watch.
The Good Liar is in theaters now.
