Ink, 2026.
Directed by Danny Boyle
Starring Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce, Claire Foy, Jonathan Hyde, Blake Harrison, Brian Gleeson, Angus Imrie, Patrick Kennedy, Lucy Russell, and Christopher Fulford.
SYNOPSIS:
In 1969, as rising media tycoon acquires the daily newspaper “The Sun,” his partnership with editor Larry Lamb turns the paper into Britain’s most influential tabloid.
Danny Boyle moves from his take on a post-Covid broken Britain by way of the rage-plague with 28 Years Later, to a period of journalistic pioneering, excess and boundary-testing with the birth of a virus of a different kind, red-top tabloid newspaper The Sun.
Sat at a table in the oldest restaurant in London, we are privy to a conversation between this story’s two major players; Jack O’Connell’s editor-in-waiting Larry Lamb, and Antipodean entrepreneur Rupert Murdoch, embodied by Guy Pearce. All Dutch-angles and iPhone-shot 360° pans, the two trade dialogue like prize boxers as Boyle captures it in his signature style. It sets the tone from page one, with the Trainspotting director in his element; inventive edits, the insertion of archive footage, a recurring motif that depicts the cast sat on a couch consuming British culture via the TV, and even framing a character introduction as a homage to Brief Encounter.
The ratatat filmmaking style continues into a meet-the-press-gang montage, which is hugely enjoyable and works brilliantly in conveying the chaotic environment of a newsroom and the disparate characters in it. Corralled into joining their new adventure are a gaggle of caricatures; Claire Foy’s self-aware feminist is introduced with a wolf-whistle, pervy sub editor Blake Harrison is recruited in a sleazy Soho cinema, Christopher Fulford’s legendary sports-editor a snooker hall, you get the idea. It’s cartoonish, fun, and a little like something from a Michael Bay action film.
Paper-thin is how they remain for the majority of Ink, because the front page is reserved for O’Connell and Pearce. The latter pulls off aloof magnate with ease, excelling during the moments the script asks him to become the overbearing boss or unhinged owner who will do what they bloody well want. O’Connell is the headline though. All suppressed ambition, he feels as though he’s walking a fine-line between charismatic salesman and The Bone Temple‘s Jimmy Crystal with his drive to get The Sun to number one on Fleet Street. If there is a villain of the piece, then it’s him, and the conflict at the heart of the film is whether he’s willing to sell his soul to outsell the Daily Mirror.
A lot of the heavier drama arrives in the more straightforward second half of Ink, which drops the filmmaking showmanship to focus on the 1969 abduction of Muriel McKay, wife to Murdoch’s right-hand-man Alick. This is where the questions of morals in print journalism are raised and echo through to modern day; invasion of privacy over a desire for content. The kidnapping is a fascinating case-study, and one that pushes Lamb towards the creation of arguably The Sun’s most iconic selling-point; the Page 3 model.
Boyle, directing from a script by James Graham (Quiz) is almost a little too reverential of the players at the dark heart of these events. Murdoch is painted as a conflicted bystander, while Lamb comes across like a wounded Jerry Maguire figure. Where’s the brutal takedown of a tabloid with the controversial history of The Sun?
We don’t get that until a final reel montage which incites the fury and anger from the viewer you might have expected from the entire narrative, and even then some infamous headlines are conspicuous by their absence. It’s a film that aims for a Have I got News for You chuckle, rather than too much condemnation. More The Full Monty than The Insider, which is a tad disappointing.
That being said, Ink is a very good marriage of directorial style and subject matter that acts as an entertaining time-capsule of an industry with very few presses still whirring, and features a superb central performance from Jack O’Connell.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film ★ ★ ★ / Movie ★ ★ ★
Matt Rodgers – Follow me on Twitter
