Green Book **** (2018, Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali, Linda Cardellini) – Movie Review

Director Peter Farrelly’s 2018 biographical comedy drama Green Book is a whole load of fun, hugely entertaining and enjoyable, with lots of laughs, some broad, some more subtle and some wicked, though it occasionally seems a little untruthful and sentimental. It is based on a true story, but the true story cannot really have been quite like this. That famous Italian-American Viggo Mortensen plays the hero Tony Lip, but as he does it so winningly, we’ll let that pass, though it hardly aids credibility.

Green Book mostly lacks edge and a true sense of danger that the situations shown on screen must have kicked up. Most of the characters are way too nice or become nice too easily. However, it seems churlish to enjoy a movie so much and still want it to be better, but then very few films are perfect. Best to sit back and enjoy it then, and for 130 minutes it motors along purringly, a bit of a Rolls-Royce machine, this movie.

So Green Book needs a reality check, and a harder edged movie, but that is a movie people wouldn’t flock to, and Green Book stands a really good chance of being a popular hit. In the meantime, this Green Book will do very, very nicely as a 2018 version of Driving Miss Daisy. It says all the right things, and says them clearly, wittily and unusually amusingly – so great!

Born in Manhattan of a Danish dad, Viggo Mortensen is very odd casting as Tony Lip, the working-class Italian-American bruiser bouncer, who in a two-month lull between gigs, is taken on as driver/ minder by Dr Don Shirley, a rather effete African-American classical pianist, who seeks out his help on his three-man band tour of venues through the bigoted American South in the early Sixties.

Mortensen nevertheless carries of the working-class Italian-American impersonation securely, and even triumphantly, for the whole movie. Have we forgotten what a good actor he is? Mahershala Ali is rewarded for his Oscar-winning performance in Moonlight (2016) with the peach of a role that he relishes as the thinking man’s pianist, classically trained at St Petersburg but reduced to popular work to sell records in the vein of Louis Armstrong meets Liberace. In the Miss Daisy role, Mahershala Ali is splendidly waspish, superior and bossy, a good foil to Mortensen’s practical everyman character.

There are other actors in the film, including Linda Cardellini as Tony Lip’s wife, but you hardly notice them. It is entirely the Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali Show, and what a good show it is! Meaning hugely well, as well as being so entertaining, it is a huge crowd pleaser.

The AFI have already awarded it Movie of the Year.

It won three Oscars for Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Mahershala Ali) and Best Original Screenplay (Nick Vallelonga, Brian Hayes Currie, Peter Farrelly). There were two other nominations: Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Viggo Mortensen) and Best Achievement in Film Editing (Patrick J Don Vito).

Green Book won three Golden Globes, including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, Best Screenplay – Motion Picture (Nick Vallelonga), Brian Hayes Currie and Peter Farrelly) and Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture (Mahershala Ali). It had five Golden Globe nominations, including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor and Best Screenplay.

It won one BAFTA Film Award: Best Supporting Actor (Mahershala Ali).

It opened on 16 November 2018 in the US but not until 30 January 2019 in the UK.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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