Darkest Hour

Darkest Hour (2017)

86% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 247 reviews)

Runtime: 125 minutes

Directed by: Joe Wright

Starring: Gary Oldman, Lily James, Kristin Scott Thomas, Ben Mendelsohn, Ronald Pickup

From: Perfect World Pictures/Working Title Films

Through tomorrow night I'll be discussing some of the Best Picture nominees. This isn't my favorite of the ones I've seen but that doesn't mean it is bad:

As has become a yearly tradition now, one of the two Saturdays before the Academy Awards I see what AMC Theatres presents in some locations across the country... their Best Picture Showcase, where in a marathon I see half of the nominees before that year's Oscars. I always just go to one of the two as it's an all-day thing. Through tomorrow night I'll post the reviews for what else I saw. Note that the first movie I viewed (late in the morning) was Dunkirk, which I already saw last summer and my “meh” opinion on it hasn't changed after a second viewing. As the perfect thing to book after that was this movie, it was actually what AMC Theatres did, and it worked beautifully seeing those two together.. what happened in Dunkirk was a big component of Darkest Hour.

This covers the first few weeks of Churchill as Prime Minister; World War II in Europe is going great for Germany and there are naturally fears about the UK being the next area to fall, so there is plenty of arguing over Winston's plans to fight against Hitler despite the odds looking dire for that plan being successful. As everyone has said, Gary Oldman was tremendous as the lead... I've heard he was accurately portrayed. No surprise he's been portrayed on film plenty of times, as he exhibits plenty of different emotions. He is irascible and when he is angry or irritated, it is made clear by him. Yet Churchill did have his doubts about his bold plan and he showed sympathy to certain characters in times of need. As he was complex in real life...

Regrettably, there's the old canard of Hollywood blending fiction with fact when it comes to “true” stories and they definitely did so here. Not all the characters shown to be willing to negotiate for peace were so at the time, plus you can tell which scenes were absurd melodrama with little to no basis in reality, and that was unfortunate to me. The film was done well by director Joe Wright and while the color palette is full of gray & brown, I can't complain about its look. Oldman will win Best Actor and I am sure it's deserved but it'll also be an unofficial Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Oscars have been doing such things for decades now, don't kid yourself and say it's just a modern phenomenon.

I wish I could have loved the film but despite the historical inaccuracies I don't regret seeing it.