Darkest Hour
Genre: Big Important™, Biopic, Drama, Oscar Bait, War
The Good
The Bad
A Big Important™ Joe Wright historical drama with a Big Important™ performance by Gary Oldman. And it’s mostly quite good.
It’s never lost on me how WWII films put us in the awkward position of cheering warhawks and hissing at cowardly peaceniks, but such is the writing of our history. Frankly, it’s difficult not to be inspired and animated by Gary Oldman’s vibrant portrayal Churchill, despite the too-cartoonish sniveling of those dastardly villains Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup) and Halifax (Stephen Dillane). This is at once an excellent and an extremely silly movie. Excellent in the way it brings history to life in a big, robust movie with big, robust performances, and silly in the way it boils Winston Churchill down to just a few endearing character quirks: he was fussy and ornery, but he was fueled by empathy, and he was a man of the people. Each of these attributes is played out in too-simplistic vignettes, in scenes with his wife Clemmie (Kristin Scott Thomas), King George VI (Ben Mendelsohn), a secretary named Layton (Lilly James), and a ridiculous sequence on the Tube where Churchill literally rubs elbows with the common British citizenry. Feels 80% less historically accurate than Dunkirk, but at least 35% more entertaining.
