{"id":758110,"date":"2026-09-02T21:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T21:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/758110\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T21:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T21:22:10","slug":"ink-review-jack-oconnell-guy-pearce-in-danny-boyle-murdoch-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/758110\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Ink’ Review: Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce in Danny Boyle Murdoch Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen James Graham\u2019s play<\/a>\u00a0Ink<\/a>\u00a0premiered in London in 2017 and jumped to Broadway two years later, director Rupert Goold infused the drama with rollercoaster momentum, extravagant musical flourishes and jolts of bawdy low comedy. Danny Boyle<\/a> adopts a similar strategy with this snazzy screen adaptation, shot through with kinetic energy, convulsive editing and a liberal sprinkling of post-punk, electro-pop and indie rock that thumbs its nose at period accuracy. It\u2019s all visually stimulating and highly enjoyable in its anti-establishment attitude, even if the impression remains that this is a morality play with an elusive point of view.<\/p>\n

\n\tGraham, who also penned the adaptation, doesn\u2019t pretend otherwise. Declining to preach, he simply lays out the historical facts in a compelling narrative spanning the late \u201860s to the 1980s. The material might have felt almost like docudrama if it weren\u2019t for the crackling work of Boyle \u2014 this is unequivocally a film from the man who gave us\u00a0Trainspotting\u00a0\u2014 and an ace ensemble led by Jack O\u2019Connell, Guy Pearce<\/a> and Claire Foy<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tInk\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tA chronicle more than a critique, but vigorously entertaining.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVenue: Venice Film Festival (Competition)
Release date: Weds., Dec. 11 (Jan. 8 streaming)
Cast: Jack O\u2019Connell, Guy Pearce, Claire Foy, Bertie Carvel, Brian Gleeson, Christopher Fulford, Patrick Kennedy, Blake Harrison, Jonathan Hyde, Lucy Russell, Abigail Amin, Georgie Henley
Director: Danny Boyle
Screenwriter: James Graham, based on his play\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 56 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThe movie is an irreverent and inventive recap of the game-changing 1969 assault of Rupert Murdoch<\/a> (Pearce) on London\u2019s starchy Fleet Street \u2014 hub of the British newspaper business. The Australian media titan enlisted Larry Lamb (O\u2019Connell), a Yorkshireman of working-class origins, as editor of his newly acquired daily\u00a0The Sun, with a mandate to make over the failing publication from a broadsheet to a tabloid, trading sober news coverage for populist content \u2014 the saucier, more scandalous and sensationalistic the better.<\/p>\n

\n\tJust as the play did, the movie treats this transition, and the soaring rise in under a decade of the relaunched\u00a0Sun\u00a0to become the country\u2019s highest-circulation daily, as a raucous caper, in which the Mephistophelean Murdoch seduces Lamb into a Faustian pact that gradually sees the editor eclipse his employer in bottom line-driven ruthlessness.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of Boyle and editor Fin Oates\u2019 adrenaline-charged montages points explicitly to the radical shift of those years\u00a0\u2014 the dumbing down and vulgarization of news culture \u2014 as a key stepping stone to our current post-truth, clickbait age, in which any social-media mouthpiece can spin biased opinions into widely accepted fact with enough amplification. That applies to everyone from paranoid conspiracy theorists to presidents.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film doesn\u2019t entirely let Murdoch off the hook for precipitating that downslide, but it does go easy on him, making the\u00a0Sun\u00a0proprietor ultimately more squeamish than his headstrong henchman when questions of ethics intrude. That risks leaving a sour taste in the mouths of people who see Fox News and its ilk as instrumental in the ascension of the far right. But maybe cynical times demand cynical detachment. In any case, there\u2019s something to be said for filmmakers trusting their audience to draw its own conclusions from this period piece and its throughline to information dissemination in the 21st century.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom the opening scene \u2014 a long exchange over lunch at journo hangout Rules during which Murdoch makes his pitch to Lamb, complete with a fat salary offer and a company car of his choice \u2014 Boyle shakes up the rhythm with quick flash cuts of the manpower and machinery that make the newspaper business hum.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tPearce is by turns low-key hilarious and intimidating as the unerringly sure-of-himself businessman, peppering his conversation with colorful Australianisms and profanity while never relaxing his laser focus. O\u2019Connell is mostly reactive at first, with Larry skeptical about Rupert\u2019s ambitions and hesitant to seem too eager. But he becomes increasingly tenacious once he settles into the editor\u2019s office, a bulldog no more inclined to take no for an answer than his employer.<\/p>\n

\n\tMurdoch is thick-skinned and accustomed to being underestimated by the condescending Brits, who see him as a crass interloper. He appeals to the mutual outsider in Lamb, who toiled away as a subeditor at leading paper\u00a0The Daily Mirror\u00a0until he grew impatient with his prospects for promotion under stuffy editor in chief Hugh Cudlipp (Bertie Carvel, who won both an Olivier Award and a Tony for his performance as Murdoch in the play) and retreated back up north to Manchester.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile making the paper a success is the primary goal, with Rupert predicting that the\u00a0Sun\u00a0will be outselling the\u00a0Mirror\u00a0within a year from its relaunch, the owner is not averse to the whiff of revenge he detects in Larry, eager to stick it to the establishment that has held him back.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe recruitment process \u2014 the majority of new hires poached from the\u00a0Mirror\u00a0\u2014 plays out in fast-paced, entertaining fashion, with meetings everywhere from a steam room to a pool hall to a Soho porn theater. Almost all the writers and editors approached initially turn up their noses at the idea of defecting to \u201cRupert\u2019s shit sheet,\u201d until salaries and job elevation win them over.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMore so than in the play, the new crew are given distinct character outlines, from plain-spoken news editor Brian (Brian Gleeson) through rough-around-the-edges sports editor Frank (Christopher Fulford) to posh deputy editor Patrick (Bernard Shrimsley), the most resistant of them to the sweeping changes Larry proposes. Even after the key positions are filled, the staff struggle to define \u201cWhat exactly is a\u00a0Sun\u00a0story?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe one significant holdout on Larry\u2019s masthead wish list is Jules (Foy). But he eventually lures her over with the offer of her own page for women\u2019s issues, something she will never get in her present job at the\u00a0Mirror. Like Larry, Jules is married and has a family, but that doesn\u2019t get in the way of their affair.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tA composite character more satisfyingly developed than her stage counterpart, Jules gives the superb Foy plenty to bite into. She\u2019s an opinionated working-class woman disinclined to fill her column inches with the usual fluff about needlework and recipes, her drive and confidence no less robust than Larry\u2019s. She gets on board with the plan to run multipart installments of\u00a0The Sensuous Woman, an American book no British publisher at the time would touch. That series is credited with ushering in a new openness in Britain around female sexuality.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Larry invites staff to share the interests they would like to see in the\u00a0Sun\u2019s pages, chief subeditor Ray (Blake Harrison) chimes in with \u201cI like women \u2026 boobs and bums.\u201d Jules goes along with the push to include \u201ctasteful\u201d photos of scantily clad models, though she balks when Larry insists on going a step further, introducing the notorious Brit tabloid staple of the topless \u201cpage three girl.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe scenes that generate the most sparks tend to be those between Murdoch and Lamb, becoming more adversarial when the editor starts operating by his own rules. Rupert is dissatisfied with the inaugural issue, calling it \u201ca cheap copy of the\u00a0Mirror.\u201d But Larry\u2019s public humiliation by Cudlipp at the Press Council Awards is the incentive he needs to take off the gloves.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMajor conflict emerges when Larry charges ahead with the\u00a0Sun\u2019s coverage of the kidnapping of Muriel McKay (Lucy Russell), wife of Murdoch\u2019s senior executive Alick McKay (Jonathan Hyde), both of whom had relocated from Australia for the company\u2019s British expansion. The shocking details of the crime and its outcome sparked a media frenzy, and Lamb\u2019s controversial editorial choices create friction with everyone from Jules to Rupert, from the union workers operating the printing presses to Scotland Yard.<\/p>\n

\n\tInk\u00a0\u2014 opening Dec. 11 in the U.S. and streaming on Netflix<\/a> from Jan. 8 \u2014 in many ways is a rise-and-fall story, played with aggressive self-determination but not monomaniacal monstrousness by O\u2019Connell. The movie is also a chronicle of the degradation of what passes for news reporting;\u00a0Sun\u00a0staffers are told that every murder, rape or theft has to be written up like a thriller. And for anyone with affection for the bygone newsroom, it\u2019s a rich evocation of a milieu now on life support.<\/p>\n

\n\tBoyle, his cinematographer\u00a0Alwin H. K\u00fcchler and production and costume designers\u00a0Carson McColl and Gareth Pugh\u00a0(both of whom come from the director\u2019s\u00a028 Years Later\u00a0<\/a>and Nia DaCosta\u2019s follow-up\u00a0The Bone Temple<\/a>)\u00a0excel at shaping a vivid sense of a time and place, with added texture in moments when the visuals assume the grainy halftones of vintage newsprint.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe integration of Daniel Pemberton\u2019s propulsive score with Boyle\u2019s typically punchy song selections is seamless. Sequences like the staffing overtures set to Sprints\u2019 \u201cSomething Gonna Happen\u201d or the relaunched\u00a0Sun\u00a0finding its groove to IDLES\u2019 \u201cThe New Sensation\u201d recall the visceral charge of Iggy Pop\u2019s \u201cLust for Life\u201d over Ewan McGregor\u2019s \u201cChoose Life\u201d monologue in the\u00a0Trainspotting\u00a0opening.<\/p>\n

\n\tEven if the final payoff feels a bit muted,\u00a0Ink\u00a0is a solid demonstration that if you want to give talky material pulse-pounding urgency, give it to Danny Boyle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When James Graham\u2019s play\u00a0Ink\u00a0premiered in London in 2017 and jumped to Broadway two years later, director Rupert Goold…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":758111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[52511,17182,96,38284,24008,120370,2839,392,58798,56,54,55,10989,234534,10306,250214],"class_list":["post-758110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-claire-foy","tag-danny-boyle","tag-entertainment","tag-guy-pearce","tag-ink","tag-jack-oconnell","tag-movies","tag-netflix","tag-rupert-murdoch","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-venice","tag-venice-2026","tag-venice-film-festival","tag-venice-film-festival-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=758110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/758111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=758110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=758110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}