Gary Oldman hasn’t done a deep dive into a character for years, but he makes up for lost time 🐓with a spectacular performance as Br꧑itish Prime Minister Winston Churchill, rousing the country to fight the Nazis against all odds at the start of World War II.
He makes a must-see out of “Darkest Hour,” a🍌n otherwise serviceable period drama and comp♊anion piece to Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk,” set during the same time frame on that besieged French beach.
Oldman, nimbly emoting from beneath thinning hair, eye bags, cheek bags, multip🌳le chins and (maybe♎) prosthetic layers of fat, gives new life to one of history’s most examined icons — no small feat.
Introduced while ligh🎃ting a cigar and sitting in the corner of a pitch-black room (director Joe Wright isn’t subtle with the symbolism), Oldman’s Churchill is an unkempt, unstoppable, often unlikable force whose spirited w🎃ife (Kristin Scott Thomas) frequently urges him to take a softer touch.
He bellows at his new typist (Lily James) and rebuffs the request of K𓂃ing George (Ben Mendelsohn) for a weekly after𝔉noon meeting immediately after the monarch appoints him prime minister: “I nap at four,” he says, with a shrug and a swig of whiskey.
Churchill’s famous words urging his countrymen and government “to wage war against a monstrous tyranny,” in his first speech, are powerfully delivered by an actor at the top of his game. Oldman’s Oscar clip🅷 is sure to be a presumably fictitious nevertheless stirring scene, in which he takes a ride on the London Underground to survey riders on whether to appease Hitler or fight the fascists.
It’s an exhilarating𓂃 contra🐬st to the weak-sauce caped crusaders who arrived at the box office last week. For a more convincing (if selectively edited) portrait in heroism, look no further than “Darkest Hour.”