The King's Speech Review

The premise is a two-hander about a man learning to talk, and the film is smart enough to know that is enough. Colin Firth plays Bertie's stammer as a physical event rather than a tic, a whole body seizing around one consonant, and the terror in his eyes before a live microphone does more work than any speech about duty could. Geoffrey Rush gives Lionel Logue the necessary irreverence, a failed Australian actor who refuses the honorific and makes that refusal the treatment.

Their sessions in the peeling Harley Street rooms are the engine, and David Seidler's script keeps finding new ways to stage the same negotiation without repeating itself. Tom Hooper's wide-angle framing shoves the king into the corner of oversized rooms, a legible idea used once or twice too often. Helena Bonham Carter supplies warmth and Guy Pearce a useful weakness. The history is tidied and the closing broadcast swells exactly where you expect it to. Still, few crowd-pleasers are acted at this level, and the final speech works because two hours have taught us what each syllable costs the man saying it.