331. The Lost King; movie review

 

THE LOST KING

Cert 12A

108 mins

BBFC advice: Contains infrequent strong language, discrimination

Oh, the irony that Steve Coogan should be accused of media bullying.

Coogan's The Lost King should be renamed The Lost Opportunity. It was a chance to tell an incredibly uplifting story of the discovery of Richard III in a Leicester car park.

Instead, Coogan, one of the leading lights of Hacked Off, and his writing partner Jeff Pope, have used it as a vehicle to victimise a named former employee of the University of Leicester.

By all accounts, Richard Taylor is a decent chap whose only offence was to be part of the team who searched for the king.

he was not interviewed ahead of the film which has cast him as the villain who claimed the glory from Philippa Langley (Sally Hawkins) - the leader of the campaign for the excavation.

According to Stephen Frears' movie, Langley is a disenchanted and divorced advertising executive who finds purpose in the search for Richard after watching him portrayed in the Shakespeare play.

Indeed, it even shows him appearing to her in the guise of the stage actor (Harry Lloyd).

Langley is portrayed as suffering ME as well as appearing to believe that the world should revolve around her.

Indeed, although she is meant to be the heroine of the story, she cuts a very awkward figure, unable to explain what are little more than hunches about Richard III's burial site.

Meanwhile, the villains are very much those who facilitate the operation - be they a university professor (Mark Addy) or Taylor (Lee Ingleby).

However, the black-and-white retelling is not only unfair but it is also daft. Langley's work wasn't unheralded - she received an MBE for goodness sake.

Why Coogan and Pope went down this road and why Frears bought into it is anyone's guess but the film is a considerable disappointment when it had the source material not to be.

Reasons to watch: Uplifting true story

Reasons to avoid: The daft politics of the glory claim

Laughs: None

Jumps: None

Vomit: None

Nudity: None

Overall rating: 4/10

Did you know? Richard III (1452–85) was the last Yorkist king of England, whose death at the battle of Bosworth in 1485 signified the end of the Wars of the Roses and marked the start of the Tudor age.

The final word. Richard Taylor: "I'd hoped my concerns would have chimed with Steve Coogan, who had his privacy invaded by newspapers over phone hacking. To see him on the other side of the fence now, doing this to me is quite frustrating. I feel kind of powerless in the way Steve would have felt." BBC

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