MOVIE REVIEW: Darkest Hour

Gary Oldman plays Winston Churchill as he is just about to become Prime Minister in the middle of 1940 Germany is running rampant across Europe.  At this time England is on the retreat in the war and as for Churchill he is surrounded by enemies in his own party as they scheme to replace him almost as quickly as they placed him in power.

This year there have been a lot of World War 2 movies, with Dunkirk being one of the best of those and one of the best of the year.  Also we’ve had Brian Cox playing Churchill during a different time in his leadership of the country.  In the race between the two performances of Churchill for me Cox has won it.  But Darkest Hour highlights a different vision of Churchill.

The story starts with then Prime Minister Neville Chamberlin facing a vote of no confidence from the other politicians.  His policy of trying to keep Hitler and the Nazi menace in check by not attacking them as aggressively as they should have has landed him out of his job.  There really is one person who should have taken the job Viscount Halifax, who favours peace talks with the hate spreading Nazi’s, but who won’t step into the leadership shoes.  The next most likely man for the job is Winston, who the establishment do not like, nor it seems to do many in his own party.  When he takes the job even the King of England expresses his concern over his placement in the role.

I’m not taking anything away from Gary Oldman as he plays Churchill, his make up is fantastic, and after a while you forget that you are watching Gary Oldman, it’s just that Brian Cox did it better.  Also when Gary Oldman walks as Churchill then it is clear it’s a far younger man, healthier man, who is walking.  They didn’t quite capture the slumping walk of the man.

The film needed something else, and I can’t place what extra that it needed, that’s my biggest problem.  The movies that trouble me more and more are the ones where I leave the cinema and believe that it was just fine, that is the problem here, Darkest Hour is just fine.  Does Gary Oldman deserve the acclaim that he seems to be gathering for this film? I don’t think so, he’s had far superior roles that should have been awarded.  It’s a good performance though, but against some of the other top shelf performances this year I can’t see it winning any awards.  The cast surrounding him including Kristen Scott Thomas, Lily James, Ben Mendelsohn, and the rest of the cast who you’ll probably know but won’t know their names are all stellar and translate their talents to the script well enough.

This isn’t exactly the most exciting script and film that you’re going to see based on the events around the early WW2 times.  This is very dialogue heavy and maybe the awesomeness that was Dunkirk this year drained me of my caring for any other movie set around that time away.  But I wanted something more and after nearly five years doing these movie reviews its irritating the socks off my feet that I can’t picture what that is.  If you like history and Gary Oldman this may be for you, for me it’s a TV movie that got ahead of itself and jumped to the silver screen.  If it was on TV I’d probably watch it again, but as for paying into the cinema to watch it, well that would be my Darkest Hour.

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

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Garth Cremona (RIP)

Comic book creator and movie reviewer. You can find out more at www.dublinwriter.com

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