Review of Darkest Hour (2017) by Charlie P — 29 Mar 2018

Within days of being elected Prime Minister of the UK at the height of World War II, Winston Churchill (Gary Oldman) must do everything he can to prove himself to King George VI (Ben Mendelsohn) and his fellow ministers and make a seemingly impossible choice, make a peace treaty with Nazi Germany, or face them down in the battle for freedom and liberty for the British people.

After the critical failure of his 2015 Peter Pan origin story, Pan, Joe Wright has thankfully returns to his Pride and Prejudice and Atonement days with this crowd-pleasing, yet uplifting look at the first month of Churchill's position as Prime Minister during World War II.

Gary Oldman does a fantastic job as a more humorous,yet determined depiction of Churchill and special mention should go to the make-up department for making him look completely like Churchill without looking like any of his other live-action roles which is an impressive achievement on it's own terms.

As with most films made for the purpose of winning awards however, although the World War II production design and acting from the likes of Lily James as Elizabeth Layton, Ben Mendelsohn as George VI and Stephen Dillane as Lord Halifax are all quite impressive on their own rights, the film does tend to suffer from awkward tonal inconsistency and some events do feel a bit too romanticized for the type of film that it's trying to be.

Overall, Darkest Hour is another good World War II film that offers one of the best depictions of Churchill seen on screen alongside Brian Cox in last year's Churchill and Timothy Spall in 2010's The King's Speech and although it doesn't offer much surprises, it's entertaining enough as crowd-pleaser fare.