Helen Mirren can make a question sound like an instruction, then let us see the effort of keeping that authority intact. We rate her most when she holds back; the grander performances can become distracting.
Fi1m perspective
In The Thursday Murder Club (2025), Helen Mirren’s Elizabeth asks questions as though the answer has already been agreed and somebody is being slow about supplying it. She needs no explanation of her past to make that authority credible. It is a useful skill in a film whose mystery gives us little reason to care. Chris Columbus has a fine ensemble, and Mirren understands how little she needs to do to hold her place in it.
The parts grew more prominent from Cal (1984) to DCI Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect (1991–2006), the television role that made her widely known. Playing Elizabeth II in The Queen (2006) made emotional restraint central to her film reputation. Later action work, including Victoria in RED (2010), gave that authority another use. We welcome the willingness to play with it, though her genre performances make a strong case for directors asking her to do less.
In David F. Sandberg’s Fury of the Gods (2023), she gives Hespera’s lines a severe formality that is funnier than any attempt to join the general noise would have been. Louise Mingenbach’s bronze and gold armour helps: it looks heavy, and Mirren speaks with a fitting sense of consequence. The choice works, but she and Lucy Liu are given little beyond glaring from high places. We can enjoy her contribution without pretending the film has found enough for her to do.
MobLand (2025) shows the limits of letting her play broadly. As Maeve Harrigan, opposite Pierce Brosnan’s Conrad, she brings mischief to the gangster drama, but the heavy vocal performances make their threats sound much alike. The accents distract, and her broadness makes it harder to believe in the people around her. There is pleasure in watching her misbehave, though it does not make the slow plotting move faster.
The dance with Jonathan Pryce in The Thursday Murder Club gives her something more demanding to do than issue threats. We were moved by the effort Elizabeth makes to keep step and say nothing; Mirren lets us see what the composure costs. It is the strongest reason to sit through a case that never becomes interesting. Start with The Queen; save MobLand for an evening when subtlety is not a requirement.
Biography
Helen Mirren is an English actor. Born on 26 July 1945 in Hammersmith, London, she trained with the National Youth Theatre and performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1965.
She is known for her portrayal of DCI Jane Tennison in the television series Prime Suspect (1991–2006) and as Queen Elizabeth II in the film The Queen (2006). She has also appeared as Hespera in Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023), Elizabeth in The Thursday Murder Club (2025) and Maeve Harrigan in MobLand (2025).
Mirren received an Academy Award for The Queen and multiple British Academy Television Awards for Prime Suspect.
