{"id":612714,"date":"2026-09-02T23:56:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T23:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/612714\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T23:56:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T23:56:11","slug":"first-look-review-ink-danny-boyles-new-murdoch-saga-is-dirty-gripping-enraging-stuff-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/612714\/","title":{"rendered":"First Look review \u2013 Ink: Danny Boyle\u2019s new Murdoch saga is dirty, gripping, enraging stuff \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ink <\/p>\n

\ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d7 <\/p>\n

Director: Danny Boyle<\/p>\n

Cert: None<\/p>\n

Starring: Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce, Claire Foy, Blake Harrison, Angus Imrie, Brian Gleeson, Lucy Russell<\/p>\n

Running Time: 1 hr 56 mins<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s Venice International Film Festival<\/a> kicks off with a terrific wallop of unsavoury British history. Adapted by James Graham from his own stage play, Ink relates the transformation of The Sun newspaper following its acquisition by Rupert Murdoch<\/a> (an unflinching Guy Pearce) in 1969. A late montage suggests this marked an escalation in media vulgarity that led to the savage free-for-all we live with today. <\/p>\n

The film is also a bit of a Faustian yarn. When Larry Lamb (thrusting Jack O\u2019Connell), then northern editor of the Daily Mail, is asked to take over the editorship of the then-struggling Sun \u2013 and juice it up to Murdoch\u2019s taste \u2013 he is, Graham suggests, initially unconvinced by the project. As the next 12 months passed, however, he became increasingly wedded to the project, ultimately celebrating the anniversary of the relaunch with the first-ever \u2018Page Three\u2019 nude. Ink would have us believe even Sorcerer Murdoch was somewhat taken aback by what his apprentice had wrought.<\/p>\n

The talky opening scene, shot partly in imitation of halftone newsprint photographs, offers worrying signs that filmed-play syndrome might set in. But that would be to dismiss the Danny Boyle<\/a> of it all. As the film progresses, cut to boldly non-contemporaneous tunes by the likes of Public Service Broadcasting and Idles, the action incorporates the wild angles and wilder cutaways we expect from this director. <\/p>\n

The script has some respect for the chutzpah and forward-thinking nature of The Sun team. They were the first to realise that the time had long passed for tabloid newspapers \u2013 fearful of the competition \u2013 to ignore what was happening on television. Indeed, the whole mass of popular culture was squeezed into its pages. But there is no mistaking the film\u2019s unease at the paper\u2019s careless excesses.<\/p>\n

Murdoch steps away from the story as Lamb gets stuck into his brief, but he returns to make clear a hostility to the powerful Fleet Street unions that will ultimately result in his shifting the operation to remote Wapping. Pearce admits the mogul\u2019s intelligence and ultimately allows in a degree of moral uncertainty. O\u2019Connell does a good job of grasping Lamb\u2019s strangled attempts to neuter his Yorkshire accent. The filmmaking is, perhaps, a bit too busy at times, but this remains a rambunctious pageant on how (if this doesn\u2019t sound too na\u00efve) the British media lost the last strand of its innocence. Dirty, gripping, enraging stuff. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ink \ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d7 Director: Danny Boyle Cert: None Starring: Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce, Claire Foy,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[26902,93,61,60,9358,802],"class_list":["post-612714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-danny-boyle","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-rupert-murdoch","tag-venice-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}