Review of Darkest Hour (2017) by Mcgillotine — 17 Jan 2018

I think we can all come to the conclusion that Gary Oldman is a great character actor, the likes of which may only be seen once within our lifetime and that is performance as Prime Minister Winston Churchill is yet another testament to this fact. However that being said the Darkest hour by itself is a fairly dull and otherwise boring film. Now I went into this film fairly blind per say, I didn't watch any trailers but as a self-described scholar of World War II history I had a fairly rough idea of where the film would go and for the most part I was correct and dissatisfied with what I saw. To put it bluntly this film is nothing more than senseless propaganda, as in the saluting the American flag to Star-Spangled Banner kind of propaganda that you're typically subjected to in just about every Hollywood war flick. My main problem with is film is the mainstreamed story for the sake of creating a plot arc for the character of Winston Churchill rather than the historical Winston Churchill. But I suppose in that being said a historical based film mocking the ineptitude of one histories most weakest military leaders wouldn't make for good ticket sales. But to where credit is due the film does make fair reference to the Gallipoli campaign from WWI a colossal failure on the part of Churchill. In the end the film plays out in typical narrative function hero rises, hero loses, hero redeems himself, hero saves the day which you'll no doubt see countless times this year.

History aside the film is otherwise pretty 'meh' and forgettable even now two days on, i'm a hard time recalling what is saw. The film establishes its need pretty early on for flashy set pieces and there there enough pretty props to satisfy everyone's belief that film takes place during the second world war from the streets of Britain to Churchill's Bunker and while it's nice it doesn't help the fact that the story is pretty weak. Direction overall is pretty average too, and going back across trailers and posters Joe Wrights name is plastered all over them whose claim to fame includes 'Atonement' a decent film and 'Pan' yes that sh*tty Peter Pan film released in 2015. So if this film attempted to build hype train around his name then I certainly wasn't getting on board.

Aside from potentially becoming the film that will give Gary Oldman his long awaited Oscar I can't see much point in recommending or otherwise watching this film again. Performances are decent, Oldmans a standout, direction is average and the plot is a propaganda driven mess that I wouldn't mind if it weren't so boring.