A pile of old tosh

Rating: 4/10 (14 January 2018)

I've grudgingly allotted four stars for three of the leading performances. Gary Oldman certainly pulls out all the stops to deliver a performance that is convincing, colourful and entirely unsurprising. Yet he's also acted off the screen by Ben Mendelsohn every time Winston meets King George, for Mendelsohn gives a performance that is more under-stated, more human and less obviously manipulative. Oldman is also out-charisma'd whenever Kristin Scott Thomas glides into view as Clemmie. So for all its earnest Oscar-worthiness, Oldman's performance isn't even the best in the film. Acting aside, there is almost nothing to recommend Darkest Hour. It's burdened with clumsy plot exposition that sounds precisely like it's been cut and pasted from a history book. It's undercut by cheap, unconvincing special effects. And, most remarkably of all - even if you've somehow been sucked in by the amateur dramatics - it has one spectacularly ill-judged scene that instantly sinks the entire enterprise. You won't have any trouble spotting which scene I mean. You'll probably be laughing out loud or reaching for something to hurl at the screen. It's when poor anguished Winston takes the advice of the King and determines to ask the British people what to do. So he heads for the London Underground and - travelling just one stop east on the District Line! - chats with a cross-section of plucky Brits who all urge him to fight on. It couldn't be more ridiculous if one said "fight them on the beaches", the next said "fight them on the landing fields" , and the next "fight them in the fields". It actually couldn't be more ridiculous if they all then simultaneously broke into a song titled "We Shall Never Surrender" and Winston danced merrily with a couple of pearly kings and queens. It's a scene so mind-bogglingly awful that any respect you might have had for the film drains completely away and you spend the rest of the running time pondering just how something so awful was ever contemplated, much less actually staged and shot.