A remarkable movie

Rating: 10/10 (24 December 2017)

It's inevitable that this movie will be mentioned with the summer blockbuster *Dunkirk*, since some of it deals with setting up the evacuation of British troops from that French port. You could say that this movie provides the background for *Dunkirk*, and that it does. But it also provides so much more.
While *Dunkirk* was a remarkable example of visual pyrotechnics, planes fighting, ships being blown up, etc., this is a remarkable example of human emotions facing crisis. Nothing blows up, except Churchill's temper. It is really almost a one-man show, in fact, because it spends most of its time focusing on what the Prime Minister went through emotionally and intellectually as he faced the crisis of the German invasion of Holland, Belgium, and France in May 1940, and the collapse of the combined Allied forces in that area that followed in the next several weeks.
(No, by the way, the German forces did NOT outnumber the Allies, nor were they better equipped. The characters in the movie who say that may have believed it, but we now know that it was not true. It was just that the Germans were better strategists than the Allies.)
Gary Oldman is remarkable as Churchill. He shows the outer bluster, but also the inner uncertainties, the hesitations, the fear of repeating the terrible World War I mistake at Gallipoli. This is a very complex character, brought to life in what is certainly an Academic-Award-worthy performance.
None of the other characters, with the partial exception of Churchill's wife, is given anything like that attention. We don't learn why Chamberlain and Hallifax wanted appeasement, though it had failed repeatedly before. We don't learn why King George VI took a long time to come over to Churchill's side, and why he did. This is strictly a one-character character portrayal. But it is very well done and, by the end, profoundly moving.
For myself I have no reservations about this movie. I don't know that I've ever given a 10 before, but this movie deserved one for me. Viewers who have not studied this part of World War II may not follow all that is going on, however, so for some parts of it may be difficult to follow. Then again, millions who knew nothing about this period went to see *Dunkirk* and enjoyed it, so that may not really matter.
As I said, a deeply moving film.