And it is here that Winston reaches his nadir, before the miracle of the little boats has manifested itself. He spends a fair bit of time down in the bunker-ish Cabinet War Rooms yelling at people: these are the “Upfall” scenes, which might get YouTube-subtitled in German in all sorts of irreverent ways. There is a scene (a bit fancifully imagined) with Churchill slumped in a bleakly lit almost unfurnished room, where he looks like something by Lucian Freud. And yet there’s no doubt about it, Gary Oldman is terrific as Churchill, conveying the babyishness of his oddly unlined face in repose, the slyness and manipulative good humour, and a weird deadness when he is overtaken with depression. But this movie packs a much bigger and more effective punch, and that’s down to a more ambitious scale, pacier narrative drive - and the lead performance.Įvery time I sit down to another Churchill drama, I promise myself I won’t just roll over for another actor in the latex/Homburg/bowtie/cigar/padding combo and doing the jowl-quivering while speaking in the voish and the weird cadencesh. Miranda Richardson played the exasperated wife Clemmie in the Brian Cox movie and here it’s Kristin Scott Thomas being exasperated and affectionate, helping the impossible old devil dress etc, in more or less the same way - although there’s more here for Scott Thomas to get her teeth into. (This film incidentally doesn’t make the mistake in The King’s Speech of implying that Churchill sided with Bertie during the Abdication.)ĭarkest Hour has obvious similarities to the recent film Churchill, with Brian Cox like that drama it imagines a pretty young WAAF figure as his secretary, for him to be at first grumpy and then soppy with - Lily James plays this part here. Ben Mendelsohn plays George VI, who is also an appeasement fan at first, though the film gallantly makes him a Churchill convert, conjuring a scene between the two of them in which his job is to stiffen Winston’s sinews. They are played respectively by Ronald Pickup and Stephen Dillane, the latter having a malign mandarin impassivity. Here, his immediate enemies do not seem to be Hitler and Mussolini as much as Chamberlain and Halifax, agitating for a deal with the Nazis and scheming to undermine Churchill’s cabinet and parliamentary position. It’s interesting for a film to remind us that appeasement as an issue did not vanish the moment that Winston Churchill took over as Prime Minister despite the famous David Low cartoon, not everyone was right behind him, rolling up their sleeves. And I have seen Emile Hirsch do much better work elsewhere and Olivia Thirlby(having just been named to The Guardian's Top 25 character actors list, ahead of Danny Trejo) simply deserves better.This is not so much a period war movie as a high-octane political thriller: May 1940 as House Of Cards, with the wartime Prime Minister up against a cabal of politicians who want to do him down. That just probably proves that in case of an extinction level event, it just comes down to location, location and location. Outside of one great speech of what disaster brings out in people(entirely self-serving in any case), pleas of international cooperation and the unique setting of Moscow, there is really nothing in "The Darkest Hour" that we have not seen before, except for maybe an appreciation for beginner physics.(Seriously, if I learned anything from "Doctor Who" over the years, it is to always wear sensible shoes in case of alien invasion.) That's not to mention all the indistinct character types running around madly. And that's when the lights go out, followed by the light show which quickly turns deadly, forcing the survivors underground until they come up for air a couple of days later. As consolation, the friends decide to go to a nightclub to drown their sorrows where they meet up with Natalie(Olivia Thirlby) and Anne(Rachael Taylor), also from out of town. However, that is not going to be enough when they find out Skylar(Joel Kinnaman) has usurped Ben's idea. In "The Darkest Hour," Sean(Emile Hirsch) accompanies his friend Ben(Max Minghella) to Moscow for moral support for a business deal.
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