Hugh Grant may not receive an Oscar nomination for this film ... but his day is coming
The engaging scamps of Hugh Grant’s early career have given way to seedier, sometimes more sinister characters. His latest performance is a masterclass in controlled tension and possible threat.
It’s interesting to think of actors at the different stages of their careers. Do they get better as they get older? Is Helen Mirren, say, better now that she was as the Great Barrier Reef goddess opposite James Mason in Age of Consent (1969), her first major film role?
I think so. Is that because she’s had a lot more time in front of the camera or because of her personal experiences going through life? Almost certainly a mix of both, but I suspect the latter is significant for all actors, as is it for all of us.
Such thoughts came to mind as I watched Hugh Grant in the quiet but bold drama Heretic, written and directed by American filmmaking team Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. Their CV as writers includes the first-rate 2018 horror movie A Quiet Place.
Grant, 64, first came to notice in Merchant Ivory movies such as Maurice (1987) and The Remains of the Day (1993). From there he moved into the romantic comedies that made him a Hollywood star, such as Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Notting Hill (1999) and Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001).
He’s always been a good actor but I think some of his best performances are in recent years in roles where he is free be slyly seedy rather than handsomely goofy.
He deserved an Oscar nomination for his role as a private detective in Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen (2019). He is brilliant as the British politician on trial for murder in the 2018 television series A Very English Scandal.
He is commanding in Heretic, which starts out as a psychological thriller and may or may not develop into a full-tilt horror movie. Not commanding in a Gladiator II rumble-a-rhino way but in a understated sense. With subtle shifts in look and voice he delivers a masterclass of controlled tension and possible threat. The opening asks a question most of us have faced. What do you do when “bible bashers”, to use the vernacular, come a-knocking. Invite them in and make tea? Politely but firmly say you’re not interested? Tell them to go to hell?
Mr Reed (Grant) more or less does all three. He is polite – indeed his Mormon visitors, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) – are at his door because he expressed interest in their church.
The missionaries tell him they will only enter the house if another woman is present. He says his wife is in the kitchen, baking a blueberry pie to go with the tea. It is a dark and stormy night and the sisters decide to go inside.
They sit in the living room and Mr Reed starts talking about Mormonism. It’s clear he knows a lot about it and other religions. He also knows a lot about board games, pop music and fast food. He thinks organised religion, too, is no more than an exercise in “hollow capitalism”.
At this point it’s almost an intellectual thriller. He warns the sisters he needs to ask them “icky” questions about Mormonism and polygamy. It’s a fair enough question and the sisters answer it well. There is humour in how he discusses Monopoly. Then, on fast food, Grant shifts. It’s just a tweak of facial expression and tone that could be passed off as still having a joke but probably is not. “Do you know,’’ he tells the sisters, “I’ve never had a Wendy.”
When Sister Barnes, more experienced than her colleague, starts to question, even ridicule, Mr Reed’s arguments, the mood shifts into psychological thriller.
He says he is going to show them “the one true religion” and warns it “may even, I’m very sorry, “make you want to die”. Thatcher and East are impressive as two young women who realise they are in a far different baptism to the one they hoped for.
But this is Grant’s film. I doubt he’ll receive his first Oscar nomination for it, or for his next film, the fourth instalment in the Bridget Jones series, due for release in February, but I think his day will come.
Heretic (MA15+)
111 minutes
In cinemas
★★★½
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