Darkest Hour

Across the veil of years, we have seen tall Churchills, obese Churchills, sloppy Churchills, gross Churchills and scowling bull dog Churchills, and yet not one movie or TV Churchill has come close to giving us the man in full, both in look and spirit, until Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour.

The Darkest Hour is filled with authentic touches, large and small. Most authentic of all is Oldman’s performance.

Churchill’s darkest hour is Gary Oldman’s finest. Gripping, touching, amusing and enlightening, his performance is the prime reason this film must be seen — but not the only one.

This is a film which breathes life, as well as alcohol fumes, into history. Like its central character, Darkest Hour has “mobilised the English language and sent it into battle.”

Gary Oldman’s portrayal of Churchill is among the best to reach the screen. With the help of makeup, Oldman immerses himself so deeply in the role that the actor disappears.

Oldman treats Churchill’s words the way a Broadway virtuoso would: as the showstopper. And who can blame him? It works.

Darkest Hour is pure, uncut Oscar bait that goes through every bullcrap great man biopic platitude imaginable in its two-hour runtime. The reason to rush to such a harsh judgement is perhaps because it’s so damn hard to understand the actual reason for making this film in the first place other than racking up gold statues.

Wow. This is THE FILM to see. It's simply gripping and despite knowing how it will end it kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time. Masterful acting - it makes you feel with its characters. I definitely recommend.

I was led to believe that Gary Oldman was in this movie and yet he's nowhere to be seen. What a scam. This was fine. It's a very theatrical movie with lots of yelling that can get annoying, but the performances are all good, especially of course the completely unrecognizable Gary Oldman (more like Gary Old Man am I right?). The makeup is mindblowing. It's unfocused and inconsistent in its style, but mostly makes up for it with a very strong third act, a delightful, though undoubtly fictional scene in a subway (let's just say the real Churchill would probably not have shaken hands with a black man) and Oldman's wonderful, though very hammy performance as Winston Churchill.

Darkest Hour was fine, I guess. Gary Oldman is brilliant and the makeup is great. But as a whole movie, it just didn't stand out. It was just like The Imitation Game in 2014, classic oscar bait (although the imitation game was much better film). It didn't delve into Churchill's life deeply and was just boring and tedious in many parts. It was a mechanical direction and storytelling, which just didn't captivate or gain my attention that much. It's definetly really good in some places and Gary Oldman deserved an oscar. The production values are stunning and it manages to have a solid first half of the film (which was the only part of the film which was consistently good). But the second half was nothing new to the biopic genre and it just wasn't creative enough to be worthy of a Best Picture nomination instead of The Florida Project or The Big Sick

The plot and the period settings are interesting, but the development is rather flat and with little real content, ending up boring along its development and resulting in an excessive duration.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]