The critics have not taken very kindly to this 4-day biopic, but I found much to admire. It's June 1944, in the week before D-Day, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill (Brian Cox) is having grave doubts about the Normandy landings. World War One saw a similar beachhead go catastrophically wrong at Gallipoli, and Churchill took much of the blame for the disaster. Generals Eisenhower and Montgomery (John Slattery and Julian Wadham) are gung-ho for a great victory, and even King George (James Purefoy) is quietly optimistic. Clementine, Mrs Churchill (Miranda Richardson), worries about her husband's stress – and his drinking. She doesn't seem to worry about his smoking: we hardly ever see him without a cigar.
This is something of a 'chamber piece', more like a play than a movie, all talk and little action. There are no battle scenes; the Blitz is in the past; London is more or less a safe place in which to be planning a mighty campaign to defeat Hitler and Nazism. Brian Cox is made up to be a very believable Winston and he does a splendid job with the great man's voice without lapsing into caricature. Only the cigars are overdone.
The rest of the cast are convincing, although Ms Richardson could have done with some sharper lines: her Clemmie is a bit like a Jane Austen mumsical matriarch. Cox is well-served by the script, although critics and historians are claiming that Churchill never actually had the four dark days of doubt and despair pictured here. There's a scene of him at prayer which becomes very Shakespearean – the PM as King Lear!
So: a talky drama, not slight but a bit slender (in spite of Churchill's Hitchcockian girth). The eve of a great moment in history. Authentic or not, this is stirring stuff.
This is something of a 'chamber piece', more like a play than a movie, all talk and little action. There are no battle scenes; the Blitz is in the past; London is more or less a safe place in which to be planning a mighty campaign to defeat Hitler and Nazism. Brian Cox is made up to be a very believable Winston and he does a splendid job with the great man's voice without lapsing into caricature. Only the cigars are overdone.
The rest of the cast are convincing, although Ms Richardson could have done with some sharper lines: her Clemmie is a bit like a Jane Austen mumsical matriarch. Cox is well-served by the script, although critics and historians are claiming that Churchill never actually had the four dark days of doubt and despair pictured here. There's a scene of him at prayer which becomes very Shakespearean – the PM as King Lear!
So: a talky drama, not slight but a bit slender (in spite of Churchill's Hitchcockian girth). The eve of a great moment in history. Authentic or not, this is stirring stuff.