That Good Night review: John Hurt transcends the material in his final film

This is a star vehicle. Hurt gets nearly all of the best lines and hogs most of the closeups too

Hurt, though, attacks his role with his usual fierce intelligence – and with just a hint of actor-manager-style hamminess too (Trafalgar Releasing )

Dir Eric Styles, 92 mins, starring: John Hurt, Charles Dance, Sofia Helin, Max Brown, Erin Richards

That Good Night has an obvious added poignancy as the final feature made by John Hurt (one of Britain’s greatest screen actors) before his death last year. It’s a very soft-centred and sentimental affair but Hurt, as he often did, transcends his material.

His performance has a barbed edge that the rest of the film lacks. He plays Ralph Maitland, an ageing English screenwriter living out his final days in a beautiful villa in Portugal. He is married to the much younger Anna (Sofia Helin). They’re seemingly very content together but, by his own admission, Ralph is an “obstinate old dog”. He can be very tactless and cruel.

Like Victor Sjöström’s old professor in Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, Ralph has left emotional wreckage in his wake. He has never been properly reconciled with his son, Michael (Max Brown), whom he never wanted to have.

In a bid to put his affairs in order before he dies, he summons Michael (himself a successful writer) to see him. Michael turns up with his girlfriend Cassie (Erin Richards) in tow. Ralph is sarcastic and rude to her. He ends up being so offensive and sexist that the couple leave before he can explain his scheme to his son.

Charles Savage’s screenplay, based on NJ Crisp’s play (originally written for Donald Sinden) has magical realist elements. Charles Dance wearing a white suit is the vaguely sinister and ethereal-seeming “visitor” who turns up to help Ralph in his plan for an assisted suicide.

The old writer soon realises, though, that he doesn’t want to go “gentle into that good night”. There are reasons for trying to stick around a while longer.

Given the maudlin quality of the storyline, the filmmakers surely didn’t need to include such a syrupy soundtrack. It doesn’t help, either, that the film is shot in the incongruously glossy style of a commercial for upmarket holidays in the Algarve.

Hurt, though, attacks his role with his usual fierce intelligence – and with just a hint of actor-manager-style hamminess too. Ralph can’t avoid his own compulsion to be honest at all times, even when he upsets those closest to him. In spite of his Scrooge-like behaviour, we know that he is a big softie at heart.

There is one very unsettling scene in which Ralph almost drowns in the swimming pool. Hurt’s skin is so pale and he looks so frail that he really does look very close to death.

The film gives Hurt the opportunity to recite some WB Yeats (he gives a rousing rendition of “The Second Coming”, with its famous lines about “mere anarchy being loosed on the world”, to a local kid he has befriended).

We also hear him performing the Dylan Thomas poem (“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”) which gives the film its title. He brings mischief, passion and pathos to the film.

This is a star vehicle. Hurt gets nearly all of the best lines and hogs most of the closeups too. Only Charles Dance’s mysterious stranger stands up to him. Hurt may have made the film very late in his life, after he himself was diagnosed with cancer, but, on the evidence here, he hadn’t lost any of the old ability to steal every scene in which he appeared.

That Good Night hits UK cinemas 11 May.