In the recent film The Critic, adapted from Anthony Quinn’s novel Curtain Call, the eponymous theatre reviewer Jimmy Erskine, as played by Ian McKellen, cannot be regarded as a shining example of his profession. Not only is Erskine a harsh denigrator of what he sees as untruthful acting on stage, tearing into hapless thespians in his regular column in the Daily Chronicle, but his extracurricular activities include furtive al fresco sex with anonymous men, blackmail and, when the occasion eventually calls for it, murder. By the time that the conniving critic gets his comeuppance, few will feel great sympathy for him.
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