Lively Oldman performance mired in a stifling, talky biopic

Rating: 6/10 (4 January 2018)

Gary Oldman's range is hard to dispute. He has been so many different types of people on screen that a performance of his as Winston Churchill during the Second World War would be an obvious selling point for this film. He does in fact give quite a potent portrayal of the British prime minister, whose character flaws and history of military and political failures were obscured and forgotten as he mobilized the British government and the British people to stand up in defiant resistance to Hitler after the German Army overran continental Europe in 1940.
Also noteworthy are supporting turns by Kristin Scott Thomas as Clementine, Churchill's patient wife, Ben Mendelsohn as King George VI whose disposition toward Churchill goes from disgust to ardent support and Lily James as Churchill's dedicated young personal secretary. Finally, Stephen Dillane is constructive as Viscount Halifax, one of Churchill's primary political rivals in the British government.
But the structure is a different story. With so many strong performances, the film seems quite content to merely tread water and give the audience little sense of how the war impacted the British people. Most of the movie takes place in closed government quarters, with Churchill either arguing ferociously with an obstreperous war cabinet or negotiating the fears of the crown. This is less a war film and more a political drama about shifting alliances in power and backroom Parliamentary calculations. It's about how initially the British government was anything but united on how to confront the possibility of a German invasion. While all of this is fascinating, it doesn't always make for viscerally gripping cinema. The film's best scene happens with Churchill talking to British citizens to gauge their morale, a rare moment of moral certainty.
I normally give a film like this a pass. But extended dialogue scenes in a film like this can actually obscure the war rather than bring it to life. This kind of stagebound account can weaken the story's grave sense of urgency and diminish the scope and ramifications of what Britain was facing in the spring of 1940. Not recommended.