Film
Darkest Hour
- Director
- Joe Wright
- Certificate
- PG
- Running Time
- 125 mins
Gary Oldman straps on the fat suit and aging prosthetics, undergoing a complete transformation to become Winston Churchill in Atonement director Joe Wright‘s Dunkirk-overlapping, Oscar-bait WWII drama.
If you’re suffering from ‘fight them on the beaches’ fatigue, however, be reassured that not a single shot is fired in this talky film, which focuses on backroom politics during the turbulent early days of the War. It’s May 1940. Useless Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup) has just been jettisoned and 66-year-old Churchill steps up to become PM, even though nobody has much confidence in the boozy orator. France and Belgium are on the verge of surrender to Hitler and it rather looks as though dear old Blighty will be next. Unfolding mainly in smoke-filled Cabinet War Rooms, Darkest Hour belongs to Oldman as the hard-drinking, self-doubting leader, but there’s strong support from Ben Mendelsohn as King George VI and Kristin Scott Thomas as the long-suffering Mrs. Churchill. Go here for our full review.
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