That Good Night *** (2017, John Hurt, Sofia Helin, Max Brown, Charles Dance, Erin Richards) – Movie Review

So very, very sad. John Hurt is lovely, but it is almost unbearable to watch a dying man play a dying man.

That Good Night is so very, very sad. John Hurt is lovely in his final performance, though it is almost unbearable to watch a dying man play a dying man. Although all too obviously based on a play (by N J Crisp), it is a good film, but Hurt elevates it into something special.

Hurt plays famed screenwriter Ralph, terminally ill in his seventies. But before the final curtain, he wants to reconcile with his actor son Michael (Max Brown) and ensure he is not a burden to his loving, beloved wife Anna (Sofia Helin), who must be some kind of saint to put up with his shenanigans.

Michael turns up at Ralph’s Portuguese Algarve villa hideaway, as bidden, but unexpectedly with his new confident and attractive girlfriend Cassie (Erin Richards), and Ralph makes himself thoroughly disagreeable. Ralph is a bit of a grouchy old sod, though naturally he has a heart of gold, which he has to get in touch with, and the others have to intuit or detect.

The Visitor (Charles Dance) also turns up,or at least seems to,  apparently to put Ralph permanently out of his misery. Dance does it well, silky and smooth as a euthanasia doctor, but The Visitor idea would work better on stage. It turns out The Visitor thinks Ralph isn’t ready for the next world yet – and that’s just as well for he finds fate hands him one more final mission.

Crisp’s play and the screenplay by Charles Savage provide Hurt with alot of waspish dialogue, which he relishes in his inimitable fashion. All that is great. The sentimental part of the drama isn’t nearly as convincing and certainly not as much fun, and the rumination on death is no fun at all, naturally. If you feel suicidal and wanting cheering up, That Good Night is not the film for you. But if you want to pay your last respects to the great and good John Hurt, this is a must see.

Director Eric Styles’s first film was the 1999 Dreaming of Joseph Lees. He says of John Hurt, he was ‘impish, unsentimental and as generous as Julie Andrews’.

John Hurt (1940–2017).

RIP the great and good Sir John Hurt.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

John Hurt: ‘impish, unsentimental and generous’.