Embarrassing

Rating: 5/10 (22 May 2020)

It should embarrass the academy that films can so easily follow a formula to get one of their little statues. This is not a bad film, it is merely not that good. The character of Churchill is always going to attract a bravura performance, and like many of his predecessors... Gary Oldman is more than up to the task. This however does not make it a 10/10 film.
Considering that 10/10 has to represent a mark indicating that no better film has ever been made. It must be so excellent, that it towers above all other cinematic achievements other than comparable woks of genius.
Historically. this is about as accurate as Spartacus, or Jason and the Argonauts. As a reading of the titular character... it offers nothing new at all. In fact... it is a series of not very well constructed cliches. This doesn't mean that Gary Oldman didn't deserve his little statue, it merely means that the standard for such an award... is lower than it should be. Let's face it... W.C.Fields might have been a nominee had he been around to audition.
I might have managed a 6/10 but for the dreadful 'underground' scene. The 'chirpy' British, salt of the earth Londoners were a dreadful hodge-podge of extras that didn't make the final cut of Mary Poppins. Trying to make the truth fit a fiction only ever achieves irritating and patronising falsehood.
Surely Hollywood can do better than this?