Kristin Scott Thomas and Gary Oldman star as Clementine and Winston Churchill (Jack English/Focus Features) )įollowing the template of the most riveting biopics, screenwriter Anthony McCarten eschews the soup-to-nuts Wikipedia approach, instead drilling down into the period that would shape Churchill into the iconic figure whose high-toned comportment and rhetoric seem like dimly remembered dreams today. ![]() “It’s not a gift,” he says grumpily when the PM position is dangled before him. When Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is forced to resign, the vagrant winds of fortune blow in Churchill’s general direction: Although he has recently been in the “wilderness” after a disastrous political career, he’s deemed the most acceptable choice among flawed contenders. “Darkest Hour” begins in May 1940, when the war is already underway in Europe, accommodationist forces still hold sway in Britain, and German troops have taken France, setting their sights on the island across the English Channel. Handsomely filmed, intelligently written, accented with just a dash of outright hokum, "Darkest Hour" ends a year already laden with terrific films about the same subject - including the winsome comedy-drama " Their Finest" and Christopher Nolan's boldly visual interpretive history " Dunkirk" - and ties it up with a big, crowd-pleasing bow. Wright brings his signature good taste - including sumptuous, jewel-box sets and elegantly staged set pieces - to an enterprise in which Oldman's hugely enjoyable star turn is equaled by similarly well-judged performances from Kristin Scott Thomas and Ben Mendelsohn. But this isn't just film-as-backdrop for a towering central performance. ![]() Now Wright returns with a fully fledged Dunkirk film: "Darkest Hour" is already receiving awards chatter for Gary Oldman's deliciously crafty portrayal of the film's main subject, a newly minted British prime minister named Winston Churchill. Until this year, perhaps the greatest piece of moviemaking about Dunkirk was only part of a movie: It was a breathtaking sequence of the massive World War II evacuation, filmed in one astonishing five-minute take that dramatically punctuated the movie "Atonement," directed by Joe Wright.
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