The Aisle Seat: All Hail “The Duke”!

(Helen Mirren, Jim Broadbent, and the Duke at the center of it all; Credit: Sony Pictures)

The Duke is both caper comedy and underdog story. On its surface, it resembles one of those inspirational tracts about a plucky outsider’s battle against great odds and greater enemies where he emerges at the end, arms raised, doing his triumph pirouette. (You know I’m thinking Rocky.) These movies are typically melodramatic, grimly inspirational, sometimes to where I root for the villains out of spite. They’re also…