If the wonderful Bill Nighy were a poker player, you’d get the sense he’d never make huge bluffs or needle his opponents, and if he were to suffer a bad beat, he would shrug and say something along the lines of, “Well, that’s the way the cards fall sometimes, right?” even as something more intense might be dancing in his eyes. He is an actor of grace whether he’s hitting notes large or small, and it is never not a pleasure to watch him execute his craft, whether he’s taking a big bite out of the screen in “Love, Actually” and the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies or tackling more serious fare in films such as “Notes on a Scandal” and “Sometimes Always Never.”
Nighy’s skill set is perfectly tailored to the lead role in “Living,” a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s “Ikiru” that keeps the 1950s time period and stays true to the most important plot points but shifts the story from Tokyo to London. From the opening credits that look exactly like movies from the 1950s through the meticulously crafted costumes and production design, “Living” instantly immerses us in a post-war London populated by men in suits and bowler hats, and women in simple dresses and pearls, a place of order and restraint — which suits Nighy’s Mr. Williams just fine.
