Kelly Reilly is persuasive as a forceful woman whose hurt remains visible. We value that intensity, but her name in an ensemble is not reason enough to recommend the film.
Fi1m perspective
As Beth Dutton in Yellowstone (2018–2024), Kelly Reilly makes toughness coexist with damage. We find her persuasive because the hurt remains apparent even when the character is being forceful. Earlier, the move from Caroline Bingley in Pride & Prejudice (2005) to Jenny in Eden Lake (2008) took her beyond the supporting period roles that had limited her opportunities. The contemporary thriller gave her a lead. Nicole in Robert Zemeckis’s Flight (2012), opposite Denzel Washington, then helped establish her in US films, before television provided the sustained opportunity of Beth Dutton.
A Haunting in Venice (2023) places her Rowena Drake inside Kenneth Branagh’s leaking palazzo, where the storm and the tilted camera do much of the unsettling. It is a decent film with a thin mystery, worth considering chiefly for the pleasure of its enclosed, inhospitable setting. For Reilly, this is another ensemble part rather than a story built around her, a familiar position in her film work. The atmosphere holds for an hour, but the obvious clues and hurried explanation leave the cast with a mystery that needs better writing.
Zemeckis’s Here (2024) is a sharper disappointment, despite the possibilities of its fixed living-room viewpoint. Reilly plays Rose alongside Paul Bettany’s Al, the generation before Tom Hanks’s Richard and Robin Wright’s Margaret. The camera has somewhere to stand, but the film has too little story, and the dialogue keeps announcing what it ought to let us discover. We felt uncomfortable watching young Richard’s mouth lag behind his words, then bored by how persistently the de-aged face drew our attention. That distraction makes this a particularly unrewarding place to look for what Reilly can do.
We would like more leading roles for Reilly, with time to develop the difficult women she plays. Start with Yellowstone for that sustained attention. Try A Haunting in Venice if the stormy detective story appeals; Here is a poor introduction.
Biography
Kelly Reilly is an English actress. Born Jessica Kelly Siobhán Reilly on 18 July 1977 in Chessington, Greater London, she began her career in British television in the mid-1990s. Her stage performance in After Miss Julie at the Donmar Warehouse (2003) earned her a nomination for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress.
Reilly is known for supporting roles in films including Pride & Prejudice (2005), Eden Lake (2008), Sherlock Holmes (2009) and its 2011 sequel as Mary Morstan, and Flight (2012). On television she has played Jordan Semyon in True Detective (2014) and Beth Dutton in Yellowstone (2018–2024). Her recent credits include Rowena Drake in A Haunting in Venice (2023) and Rose Young in Here (2024).
