Can Makeup Win An Academy Award?....It can! Well well well...

Rating: 8/10 (6 January 2018)

Darkest Hour could have been just another bland yet passable biopic. It certainly has the glossy, patriotic soul of something like Lincoln. However, where Lincoln tends more towards sanctimonious worship and Hollywood dramatics, Wright (mostly) dodges those inclinations in favor of honest engagement and high-entertainment. Much like Churchill himself, Darkest Hour is a reminder of the power of great-words-delivered-well to affect and thrill.
During Hitler's conquest of Europe, Britain was going through a changing of the guard, in which a brash but brilliant Winston Churchill became the Prime Minister and headed up the UK's stand against tyranny. Funny enough, much of the focus is on the conflict at Dunkirk, making it a great companion to that Nolan film from earlier this year.
But where that movie took place on the frontlines of the battle, here we spend our time in the backrooms with Oldman's Churchill, and honestly...what can I say? He's completely stunning in the role. Sure, the seamless makeup is doing a ton of work, but Oldman is definitely pulling his own ample weight. The accent, the little quirks, the thin line between "resolve" and "stubbornness"; we're consistently reminded that, while Churchill was a certainly great man, he was also just a man.
Director Wright (Atonement) has a great knack for thinking through his films from an audience perspective. Yes, there's plenty of thematic import to the filmmaking; the playfully intense score, symmetric cinematography, and steady editing all capture the necessary disruption of Churchill in the order of Parliament. Yet even though he makes frou-frou, high falutin' period pieces, he always focuses on the understanding and interest of we-the-crowd, giving us a hyper-stylized and surprisingly cool historical trip.