Darkest Hour

Gary Oldman blubbers and bellows from under wads of makeup as Winston Churchill in this lifeless biopic by director Joe Wright (Atonement), portraying the embattled British prime minister during the tumultuous weeks between his 1940 appointment and the rescue mission at Dunkirk.  Despite his abrasive nature and alcohol-soaked diet, Churchill was a compromise choice intended to unite Britain’s rival political parties against the Nazi threat, although his saber-rattling rhetoric quickly proved divisive.  While Oldman chomps on the scenery in a sweat-stained awards grab, much of the action is filtered through his secretary (Lily James), whom Churchill treats with a borderline Weinstein-ian overfamiliarity (bad year to heroize handsy bosses in bathrobes).  After Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk  and Their Finest, this is the third 2017 release to touch on the Dunkirk evacuation, although Darkest Hour  stops short at Churchill’s “we shall fight on the beaches” speech, as if to underline its own pointlessness.