Jack O’Connell’s sensational performance in Ink should finally make him a mega star

Forget the highly lauded ‘generational runs’ of actors like Robert Pattinson and Anne Hathaway right now – it’s Jack O’Connell who should finally achieve megastardom after his sensational turn in Danny Boyle’s Ink.

‘Sensation’ is the appropriate word when you’re playing the ruthless editor of a tabloid who’s pursuing ambitious readership goals, but O’Connell’s performance is actually one of quieter brilliance.

He stole scenes as the charismatic vampire Remmick in Sinners last year before chilling the blood as sadistic cult leader Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal in 28 Years Later and its sequel, The Bone Temple.

But as The Sun’s editor Larry Lamb, installed at the ailing outlet by tycoon Rupert Murdoch (Guy Pearce) in 1969 with grand plans to transform the media landscape, he’s playing more human and grounded – but no less powerful.

Based on James Graham’s acclaimed West End play, and adapted by the writer himself for the big screen, Boyle presents a gripping and irreverently bold take on the story of Fleet Street revolution in Ink.

Right from the start Boyle shakes things up a bit, leaning into the theatricality of Ink’s roots to allow himself some big, stylised choices like showing O’Connell and Pearce’s faces purely in dotted newsprint. He also shirks realism throughout with pacey flash-forwards, dramatic slow-motion pans and cutting away from the newsroom in one scene to show his journalists assembling on a giant sofa to watch TV together.

Ink also dives straight into the conversation about Lamb coming to work for Murdoch to do something fresh, as a fellow outsider – his Northern, working class man to Murdoch’s Australian. ‘As long as it’s not The Sun,’ says Lamb, a wry nod to its divisive reputation. But Murdoch insists that it’s ‘class-driven bulls**t’ when, hearing his ideas about livening things up, Lamb responds: ‘You want me to bring The Sun downmarket?’

And while a cheeky Jaguar convertible finally helps get Lamb onboard, it’s an uphill battle to persuade any other journalists to join him – including the veteran sports editor who was looking forward to a redundancy package, and the married Lamb’s former colleague and current girlfriend, Jules (Claire Foy), a newly-written amalgam character representing various female journalists who worked in the industry at the time.

He’s even shown hiring photographer Beverley Goodway (Angus Imrie) from working at a morgue after he was fired from the sports beat by the Times as he kept missing crucial goals; he would go on to snap the publication’s famous Page 3 glamour models, which Lamb introduced, including Stephanie Rahn, the first to pose topless.

You can tell Boyle is having fun with Ink and its brashness, not taking things too seriously when there’s room for a gag – and there are plenty of them thanks to Graham and his effortless dialogue.

The film’s pace is relentless, helped along by impressively frantic editing from Fin Oates, as Murdoch places a three-week deadline on Lamb to get the paper up and running as they chase circulation figures most papers today could only dream of.

There’s also Lamb’s old boss from The Mirror, Hugh Cudlipp (Bertie Carvel, who played Murdoch in the stage production), ready to criticise him at every turn as Lamb shoots to eclipse his success.

A standout scene sees Lamb and the team building The Sun’s identity from the ground up, using their own interests in TV, women, sex, ‘mindless violence’ (or boxing, as it’s better known) and the weather to shape the coverage it will provide. Horoscopes make the cut too, with Lamb commenting: ‘Rupert is a Pisces and superstitious – give him reason to be optimistic.’

You’ll be unsurprised to hear though that posh Bernard’s (Patrick Kennedy) hobby of adapting lesser known Émile Zola plays from French isn’t an area The Sun chooses to explore.

Ink also revels in the wild booze-fuelled Christmas party excesses, a tradition journalists attempt to keep up today, before delving deeper into the darkness at its heart when a real-life kidnapping and murder forces Lamb to a crossroads where he must reckon with how far he’ll go to get that front page splash and drive The Sun to the top.

O’Connell makes a complex, sometimes unpleasant man likable, feeding into the classic underdog vs establishment story. Surprisingly, the same can be said of Pearce’s Murdoch, who is perhaps as human as any of us have seen the media mogul appear to be in a long time, acting as the more grounded and persuasive foil to O’Connell’s more volatile Lamb.

Foy is also as sharp and watchable as ever, even in a slightly underwritten role that has to awkwardly straddle myriad women’s experience in the newsroom of over 50 years ago. I understand and appreciate the role, I just wish it had come across slightly less like a generic stock character.

Nevertheless, the oomph which Boyle has channelled into Ink prevents it from being overlooked as just a simple and perfectly decent true-to-life prestige drama, as does Graham’s writing and the top-drawer performances.

And while its metaness and visual style in places may not appeal to everyone, they certainly distinguish it from the masses. Ink is a film that can’t be ignored.

Ink premiered at the Venice Film Festival on September 2, 2026. It will release in UK cinemas on January 8, 2027.