Darkest Hour (2017)

In case "Dunkirk" seemed to event-centered, you're in need of more detail, and Wikipedia is not catchy enough, probably the best option is "Darkest Hour". I never got this trend in the western cinema of getting out releases on the same topic at so short time intervals. I doubt there's that much financial gain in a movie like that, but let's not get busy now with details on the inner economics of the movie business...

I doubt there's much to say - the movie is a historical piece describing the context of UK entering WW2 from the appointment of Churchill as PM, until the retreat from Dunkirk. As a plus, you get to improve maybe a bit your knowledge on the events flow in that period and about the political intrigue in the English Parliament (more or less romanticized). The movie bets a lot on Gary Oldman's performance in the title role, which indeed is a good one, although I still cannot explain myself this choice. The transformation is impressive, but the effort for it seems likewise = without taking anything out of the result, I think that it would've been more... let's say, direct to choose somebody more close to the age/look/etc (Hopkins comes now to my mind).

The bad part is that, relying too much on the main character, the rest is a bit lost. If in "Dunkirk" Nolan for me seems that he managed the impossible = to get something surprisingly decent out of an event where the movie potential is close to zero, but this required a complete mix between the camera work, sound and a very simple script, here we're a bit lost in cliches... This is to be expected from a history movie, especially one centered around Churchill = words of wisdom, inspiring speeches, solemn moments and all the rest, but still... the presented timeline seems a bit short and overfilled with such stuff just to cover more movie minutes. It would've been more natural having a historical speech at the right time and an action timeline spanning beyond Dunkirk. As it is, the movie looks like a sort of "Episode 1", just that unlike "Star Wars" we don't need any sequel to find out the ending...

Rating: 3 out of 5