Movie Review: Mr Burton

 Movie Number 34 of 2025

The Movie: Mr Burton

The Cinema: Hoyts Victoria Gardens

Runtime: Two hours, two minutes. 

Stars: 4.5

Oh, this one is a little stunner of a film. Being English, about a piece of history not many know about, with some of the foremost talents Britain has to offer - oh, and most if it is set in the South of Wales, there was no change I wasn't going to like this. 

For me, Mr Burton is a paramount example of great British cinema. 

It's wonderful. 

And it's not quite what you think you're going to get. You're expecting a film about Richard Burton the actor. Part of this is true, but it's so much more than that. 

What people aren't aware of is Richard Burton started out life as Richard Jenkins Jnr. (Harry Lawtey), the twelfth child of a drunken miner, who by 1940 was living with his older sister, Cis (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) being prepared at school to be cannon fodder in the next couple of years. Young Richard had no airs or graces. He was a boy from Port Talbot who was just getting through, but with enough of a ragamuffin to survive. 

Thankfully, his teacher, Dick Burton (Toby Jones) saw a spark in young Richard, first by having his family allow him to stay in school, introducing him to the theatre, first by having him act in the local amateur dramatics, then by taking him under his wing to stay with him at Ma Smith's (Lesley Manville) lodging house, and by finally adopting the lad to help him get into a course at Oxford, which his low birth and slightly suspect living arrangement would never allow. 

Burton the older is expertly portrayed by Toby Jones. It's a performance in restraint as you watch him gently mould the lad, sternly and lovingly shaping the man who is known as being one of the world's greatest actors. Jones is pitch perfect. 

Harry Lawtey is also brilliant as Richard. He takes our protagonist from an uncouth teenager to the actor at Stratford Upon Avon going onto the stage for the first time playing Hal in the Henry IV plays - the juxtaposition taking the journey from boy to man - like Hal on stage. He knocks this one out of the park. Mark his name. Harry Lawtey is going to be one to watch. 

Written by Tom Bullough and Josh Hyams and directed by Marc Evans, what's produced here is a stunning view of what can happen when somebody is invested is making somebody great. Without PH Burton the odds would be Burton would have ended up wounded or dead on a battlefield.

Instead, he was assisted to be one of the great actors of the 20th Century. 

This is firmly in the "take your Mum" category of films. For me, just watching the stage craft - particularly watching Lawtey transform from a gormless boy into an established actor as Toby Jones assists him on his way... Chef's Kiss. 

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