The Professor and the Madman (2019)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
James Murray	Mel Gibson
William Chester Minor	Sean Penn	½
Eliza Merrett	Natalie Dormer
Muncie	Eddie Marsan
Ada Murray	Jennifer Ehle	½
Charles Hall	Jeremy Irvine
Church	David O'Hara
Henry Bradley	Ioan Gruffudd
Winston Churchill	Brendan Patricks
Richard Brayne	Stephen Dillane
Frederick James Furnival	Steve Coogan
Philip LyttletonGell	Laurence Fox

Review

Producer Mel Gibson and his director Farhad Safinia (here credited under a pseudonym) disavowed this entire production before the film was released following a dispute with production company Voltage Pictures. Luckily, their differences aren't visible on-screen, because this is a fine little film about Scottish lexicographer James Murray (Mel Gibson), renowned for his work with compiling the Oxford English Dictionary, and William Chester Minor (Sean Penn), a mentally ill murder-convict who from his room at Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum became one of the leading contributors of entries for the dictionary. This story, based on the book "The Surgeon of Crowthorne" by Simon Winchester, is so remarkable and out of the ordinary that the small artistic liberties the filmmakers allow themselves aren't worth mentioning. In the skilled hands of Safinia, the film very rarely comes off as anachronistic. The Professor and the Madman combines its appreciation for the English language with a couple of engrossing character-portraits which are solidly (Gibson) and brilliantly acted (Penn), respectively. Penn's performance here is so dedicated and full of intuition that one could get concerned about the actor's own mental health. It's a performance that could have been an Oscar candidate under different circumstances.