Darkest Hour - Film Review

'Darkest Hour is directed by Joe Wright and stars Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill once he became Prime Minister of England, and shows the conflicts and tough decisions he had to make during WWII.

Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill is incredible. He really embodies the character, down to the way he walks, talks, and looks. Most of the time, it never feels like your watching him act, he feels so authentic with his performance. The makeup and prosthetics on Oldman are worthy of high praise, and gives him that iconic look. You genuinely feel the weight of Britain on his shoulders, due to his immaculate re-imagining of Churchill.

The direction of this film feels very sharp and sleek, as well as the cinematography which seems to just sweep through scenes so seamlessly, yet it feels so clean-cut. It is a rather gloomy looking film in its colour palette, but is still visually lovely to look at. The production design is also splendid. The whole film captures its time of the 1940s marvellously, and it almost feels like real events from that time are being presented to you.

The film doesn't really have any large glaring flaw, although there isn't anything we haven't seen before. It goes beat for beat essentially how you would expect a bio-pic to play out, but saves it from being a throwaway historical drama due to its fantastic re-imagining of Churchill, its exceptional sense of location and time, as well as its interesting story.

'Darkest Hour' has an interesting story, paired with its beautiful cinematography, and an unmatched performance by Oldman. It is nothing spectacular or entirely noteworthy, it's just a really well made historical bio-pic.

'Darkest Hour' - 77%