BRIAN VINER: Jack O'Connell is thunderously good as Fleet St legend Lamb in Ink

See more Daily Mail on Google - save us as a Preferred Source Published: 17:03 EDT, 3 September 2026 | Updated: 17:24 EDT, 3 September 2026 VENICE FILM FESTIVALInk (116 mins)Verdict: Hugely colourfulRating: Four stars Loud, brash and snappily edited, as a film Danny Boyle's Ink perfectly replicates its subject: The Sun newspaper.The story, beginning in October 1969, chronicles The Sun's first year or so after new Australian owner Rupert Murdoch (Guy Pearce) hires charismatic Yorkshireman Larry Lamb (Jack O'Connell) as editor. It is, to say the least, an eventful 12 months, during which The Sun, from being in Lamb's own words 'a laughing stock', overtakes the Mirror to become Britain's best-selling daily paper (a position now long occupied, of course, by the Mail).Adapted by James Graham from his own stage play, Ink is at its most enjoyable when focusing on how Lamb and his hand-picked cabal of senior journalists go about creating a new kind of publication, in which everything, even hard news, is delivered as entertainingly as possible. Loud, brash and snappily edited, as a film Danny Boyle's Ink perfectly replicates its subject: The Sun newspaper The editor asks his team what engages them most, how they have fun, and from that (choosing to disregard the fellow who in his spare time likes to translate the lesser-known plays of Emile Zola) he forges the content of his paper, with due prominence given to television (previously treated rather gingerly by the press), football, astrology and sex. And he promotes coverage of that greatBritish preoccupation, the weather.It all seems obvious now, but it was pioneering stuff then, driven by Murdoch's fierce hostility to Britain's establishment, although even he is horrified when Lamb, obsessed with circulation figures, turns his attention to another kind of figure in the form of the Page 3 girl.O'Connell is thunderously good as Lamb, though Pearce, at times, perhaps makes his Murdoch a little too tentative.Claire Foy is excellent as the paper's women's editor, Jules, a fictitious amalgam of certain famous Fleet Street females, giving as good as she gets in The Sun's testosterone-soaked newsroom. Incidentally, the film's spectacularly profane language taught me a few Italian swearwords on Wednesday, thanks to the subtitles at the 83rd Venice Film Festival.Ink opens in the UK on January 8.