Oldman excellent in otherwise mediocre biopic

Rating: 7/10 (8 June 2018)

"Darkest Hour" presents a somewhat hagiographic portrayal of Winston Churchill in the days leading up to the Dunkirk evacuation. Churchill is depicted as a steadfast defender of England in the face of both the ruthlessly efficient German army and the hapless conciliators in his own government, such as Neville Chamberlin and Lord Halifax, who see negotiating with Hitler as the way to peace. The clock is ticking, as 300,000 Allied troops are encircled on the beaches of Dunkirk and hard decisions must be made. The cast is uniformly excellent, with Oldman's much-lauded performance a standout, but the movies suffers from historical inaccuracies (discussed at length elsewhere). The scene where the Prime Minister suddenly leaves his chauffeur-driven car and boards an Underground train where he can gauge the opinions of a suspiciously diverse group of Londoners is a particularly egregious example of 'fake history', allegedly inserted to spare modern audiences from the monochrome reality of 1940's British politics. There are also some gimmicky camera tricks that could have been dispensed with. Many people who dislike Churchill feel that films such as this do little to present the darker side of his history and politics. While I have no problem with the perspective the filmmaker's chose, and I appreciate that some dramatic license is often necessary to tell a complex story in a short window, making up facts undermines the credibility of historical films, and, at least to me, diminishes their educational and entertainment value.