Danny Boyle’s tabloid drama Ink, the origin story of Rupert Murdochs’ British tabloid The Sun, has opened the Venice Film Festival.
James Graham’s script, starring Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce (as Murdoch) and Claire Foy, is set in 1969 as the rising media tycoon acquires the daily newspaper. His partnership with editor Larry Lamb (O’Connell) turns the paper into Britain’s most influential tabloid.
The early notices have been positive so far, with the actors coming in for high praise in particular. Rotten Tomatoes is scoring the movie at 92% from 12 reviews.
Deadline’s Pete Hammond called the film “sensational” and said of the acting: “O’Connell and Pearce have never been better and really come to play here. It is a thrilling match to see them go toe to toe and watch as the power dynamics between them shift.”
The Times of London gave the film 4/5 stars, writing: “Flashbacks and flash forwards abound, archive headlines pulse through the dizzying frames and everywhere there’s a sense that Graham’s talky source material is being hammered into vibrant life by a director whose default setting is adrenaline overdose.”
UK outlet The Daily Telegraph also scored it 4/5, while trumpeting: “In its own down-at-heel, whisky-breathed, nicotine-fingertipped way, Ink might be Britain’s belated answer to Mad Men…”
Bilge Ebiri in Vulture was impressed, describing the drama as “electrifying” and “Danny Boyle’s best film in decades”: “While it doesn’t go for overt condemnation, the film makes it abundantly clear that the events it depicts ultimately gave birth to the solipsistic, techno-feudal morass of our present moment. It’ll infuriate many, but it might also be a masterpiece.”
Another positive review came from Screen International which hailed the “entertaining” film’s “gripping performances”, while Variety also called the movie “sizzling” and described Jack O’Connell as “superb”.
Indiewire was more tempered, giving the film a B score: “The lessons that British director Boyle wants to tell us by the movie’s end are groan-inducingly predictable… But Ink is bolstered by the strength of its actors, who realize characters who are never likable but are constantly fascinating.”
The Guardian gave the movie three stars, praising O’Connell’s turn, but also found faults, calling it “a lurid, violent and thumpingly unsubtle movie full of Dutch angles, cartoony shocks and gargoyle closeups.”
