Sixty-year-old self-educated working-class Kempton Bunton appears in Court Number 1 at the Old Bailey, pleading not guilty to charges of stealing Goya's Portrait of the Duke of Wellington and its frame from the National Gallery in London. Six months earlier, in spring 1961, he had sent a script to the BBC from his native Newcastle upon Tyne. Soon afterwards he is jailed at Durham for 13 days for watching TV without a licence. Although he can afford one, he refuses to do so as he is campaigning against pensioners having to pay it, part of his wider strong beliefs about supporting the common man.
Kempton's son Jackie meets him on his release and on their way home they visit the grave of Marion, Jackie's sister, who had been killed at age 18 in a bicycle accident. Kempton's wife Dorothy works as a housekeeper and babysitter for a local councillor and his wife; Jackie aims to become a boat-builder and move away; and his elder brother Kenny lives in Leeds, working in construction but involved in low-level crime. Kempton himself is sacked from his job as a taxi driver due to being over-talkative to passengers and giving a free ride to an impoverished disabled First World War veteran. He gets Dorothy to allow him a two-day trip to London to drum up press and parliamentary attention for his campaign and BBC interest in his scripts, on condition that if he does not get that attention he will give up writing and campaigning and get a job. An unseen man with a north-east English accent steals the painting, and after Kempton's return to Newcastle, he and Jackie make a false back to a wardrobe to hide it.
Kempton sends a series of ransom notes to the government, saying he will return the painting on condition the elderly be exempted from paying for a TV licence. Kenny and his married-but-separated lover Pammy come to visit his parents and she spots the painting in the wardrobe, revealing this to Kempton in hopes of getting half the £5,000 reward offered. Panicked, Kempton abandons a suggested Daily Mirror plan to raise money for his campaign via an exhibition of the painting and instead walks into the National Gallery to return it and confess to the theft. Though the case seems hopeless, his barrister Jeremy Hutchinson defends him on the grounds that he had no intent to deprive the Gallery of it permanently, but instead simply "borrowed" it to further his campaign, an impression Kempton bolsters by voluble testimony when questioned by Hutchinson.
Back in Newcastle during the early stages of the trial, Jackie reveals to his mother that it had in fact been he who stole the painting for his father to use in his campaign, with his father covering for him and taking the blame. The jury acquits Kempton of all charges except the theft of the £80 picture frame, which Jackie had removed from the painting at his London lodgings and then lost. After his three-month sentence, Kempton and Dorothy forgive each other over how they had mishandled their grief at Marion's death. Their reconciliation is evident when they are sitting together in a cinema watching the James Bond film Dr. No, and chuckle when they see the scene that shows Sean Connery spotting the "stolen" Goya painting of the Duke of Wellington.
Four years later, Jackie admits his guilt to the police, but they and the Director of Public Prosecutions fear that a new trial could lead to Kempton being called as a witness and again becoming an embarrassing cause célèbre. They therefore agree that if Jackie does not go public, they will not prosecute. Text at the end of the film states the frame was never recovered and that no plays by Bunton were ever produced, but that, in 2000, TV licences were made free to those over age 75. By August 2020, just before the film was first released, the policy of free TV licences for the over 75s had ended.[8]
It was announced in October 2019 that a film about the 1961 theft was in development, with Broadbent as Bunton and Mirren as his wife and Roger Michell set to direct.[12] Fionn Whitehead was added the following month.[13]
Filming began in November 2019, with Goode joining the cast.[14] Location shooting took place in Bradford and Leeds, and the production team also used Prime Studios in Leeds.[15]
Release
The film had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on 4 September 2020.[16] It was also selected to screen at the Telluride Film Festival in September 2020, prior to its cancellation due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[17] Shortly after, Sony Pictures Classics acquired the Latin America, Scandivanian and US distribution rights to the film.[18]Pathé's distribution arm released the film in France and Switzerland.
The film was originally scheduled to be released in the United Kingdom by 20th Century Studios via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures on 6 November 2020,[19] but Pathé later delayed it to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[20] On 7 June 2021, it was announced that Pathé would release the film on 3 September 2021, after announcing a new distribution deal with Warner Bros. Pictures.[21] On 23 July, Pathé announced that the film release would be again delayed, this time to 25 February 2022.[22]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 97% of 129 reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.5/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "A sweet swan song for director Roger Michell, The Duke offers a well-acted and engaging dramatization of an entertainingly improbable true story."[23]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 74 out of 100 based on 35 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[24]
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