DEoL @ London Film Festival 2026 #3 - Ink (UK/France/USA 2026: Dir Danny Boyle)

It's 1969 and entrepreneur Rupert Murdoch, following his acquisition of the News of the World, has just bought the struggling broadsheet The Sun from the Mirror Group, a paper with a very limited circulation. People think him bonkers, but he has an idea; to relaunch the paper to an audience who fall between other newspapers - and this is at a time when daily papers are bought by a significant percentage of the UK - and provide something that the working person would want to buy regularly. He also wants 'the establishment' to see him as a major player, something he has, to date, been unable to achieve.

To make this happen, Murdoch makes an offer that can't be refused to Larry Lamb, a brash northerner who at the time was editing The Manchester Daily Mail. Lamb accepts, packs up his family and moves down south, pitching to a number of fellow writers and sub editors to join him.

This is the jumping off point for Danny Boyle's latest movie, which charts The Sun's meteoric rise in popularity under Lamb's control, choosing a populist approach to content and daring to take the paper to places that other titles avoided.

A ferocious Jack O'Connell plays Lamb to Guy Pearce's Murdoch, and much of the film is devoted to the shifting relationship of the pair, with the editor giving the people what they want, no matter how salacious, and the owner tolerating, but never embracing his protege's approach.

Adapted by James Graham from his own 2017 stage play of the same name, Ink's cast of characters mixes the fictious with the real; chief among these is the excellent Claire Foy as Jules Davies, a plain speaking amalgamation of several strong women who worked on the paper at this time, advancing the female angle of the daily while competing with the hard talking, tough speaking male staff.

Boyle's movie, while remaining faithful to the play, nevertheless manages to open out the action into the printing presses and rainy streets of London; the film begins and ends in elite hangout Rules, the oldest restaurant in London, bookended with two scenes that take place just over ten years apart. The expense account living enjoyed by the pair, and indeed the staff of The Sun, locks the journalists and executives in a golden handshake in which they must tolerate, if not like, the increased excesses of the newspaper; a real work hard, play hard environment. 

It also covers the most horrendous (real life) incident in Lamb's tenure: the mistaken identity kidnap (and eventual murder) of Muriel McKay (Lucy Russell), wife of Murdoch executive Alick McKay (Jonathan Hyde). The kidnappers, who wanted to extort a ransom, thought they'd taken Murdoch's wife, and the paper unwisely decided to publicise the incident as it played out. McKay's end (her body was never found) demonstrates the line between responsibility and exploitation, one which sadly didn't hurt The Sun's circulation.

The film closes with the decision which changes The Sun's fortunes forever (and outlasts Lamb and his successor Kelvin Mackenzie, shown waiting in the wings); to feature 20-year-old Stephanie Rahn as its first 'Page 3' girl. Boyle pivots off this scene to a filmed montage which suggests that the paper presaged the slide into populism, embracing pugilist politicians, Facebook, Farage, Musk and Trump. It's a lofty claim and one I didn't totally buy into; indeed I question whether the film would have existed at all if it weren't for the inspiration of the stage play.

Ink is well acted, with the stylish flourishes (and anachronistic soundtrack) which are pure Danny Boyle. See it for O'Connell's taught, driven Lamb and its recreation of a lost time, even though ultimately the film might not equal the sum of its admittedly involving parts.