Darkest Hour Review

Here's a movie that's been on my radar for a while now. After hitting the film festival rounds starting with Telluride on September 1, 2017, "Darkest Hour" got its official theatrical release on November 22 in four theaters before expanding nationwide on December 22. I had my eye on this since that point, but there were a lot of other movies that were higher on my priority list, so this slipped away from me for a while. The awards buzz weren't super strong as a whole, outside Gary Oldman, who's been the consensus best actor winner from the beginning. I thought it was a possibility that Gary Oldman for best actor would be the only nomination it got, which is why I didn't rush out to see it. But this surprised in a big way on nomination morning by capturing six nominations, which included a best picture nomination. When that happened, "Darkest Hour" immediately shot right up to the top of my priority list along with "Phantom Thread" and "Call Me by Your Name," as those were the only three best picture nominees that I hadn't seen. My plan is to give you a review of all three of these movies, but "Darkest Hour" was the most accessible initially as it was already in wide release while the other two are still making their way to more theaters. So here we go with its review!

Before we dive into "Darkest Hour," we have to reopen old wounds from this past summer with a little film called "Dunkirk." I remember writing my review of "Dunkirk" with high levels of extreme rage, mostly directed towards Christopher Nolan fanboys who were praising the movie as the best war film ever made as well as one of the best overall films ever made. The movie had a 9.8 on IMDb after its first 3,000 votes... which took place BEFORE the movie was released to the general public. That means we had nearly 3,000 people give the movie a 10/10 before even seeing it JUST because it was directed by Christopher Nolan. Had the same exact movie been made by any other director, I highly doubt this same fan base would've even shown up. And if they did, I think they would've had a much different opinion as this was a very unconventional war film. I think critics would've still loved it, but I think audience reaction would've been a lot more mixed since they wouldn't have been obligated to praise their Lord and Savior, Christopher Nolan. Thus when I saw the movie and was mostly unimpressed, I wrote a pretty vicious attack towards these Nolan fanboys, which in turn backfired on me as now I have the reputation of hating Nolan, which is totally not true. But oh well.

Nolan has now made 10 films and as that is the golden number, I now plan on creating a list where I rank those 10 films, which should demonstrate that I really love seven of those 10. I'm just not madly in love with the most recent three, "Dunkirk," "Interstellar" and "The Dark Knight Rises." "Interstellar" completely craps out for me in the final act and "The Dark Knight Rises," which is still highly entertaining, has a lot of plot holes that have bothered me more and more as time goes on. The reason why I wasn't a fan of "Dunkirk" was mainly due to the perspective. I wanted the movie to teach me the historical context of what was going on at the time and I wanted characters to latch onto. I got neither of those. We just got 106 minutes of war scenes. Nolan assumed his audience already knew about the history of Dunkirk, so he completely avoided that. As far as characters go, he wanted to show the world what it was like as an average, normal soldier experiencing war. With that latter point, I feel it's quite normal for your average soldier to not have knowledge of the bigger picture. They're just following orders from their superiors. So it makes it even more accurate to the average solider. And I thought that was fascinating. For like 20 minutes. Then I got bored.

The reason why I'm kinda re-reviewing "Dunkirk" is that it's not very often where I have specific complaints about a movie that are completely rectified six months later with another movie. That's why I was so taken aback by "Darkest Hour." I wanted "Dunkirk" to give me historical context and characters to attach myself to. I got them in "Darkest Hour." The battle of Dunkirk in history is when the German soldiers essentially corner the British troops at Dunkirk, nearly to the point of winning the war. Winston Churchill essentially pulled a rabbit out of the hat for Britain, saving them from complete disaster and thus extending the war wherein Germany of course lost and the Allies won. "Darkest Hour" is the story of Winston Churchill being appointed as Prime Minister and being immediately faced with a lot of difficult decisions. A lot of the leadership at the time wanted Britain to surrender and negotiate with Hitler. Does Winston Churchill go with that or is he going to come up with a daring plan to fight on against incredible odds? This is the exact conflict that "Darkest Hour" focuses on. Even though I knew how it was going to end, especially since I saw "Dunkirk," I was fascinated as I watched the history behind how it all came about.

There's a lot of uncertainty this Oscar season, but one thing that seems to be a forgone conclusion is that Gary Oldman is going to win that trophy for best actor. I can't officially judge this category quite yet because I have not seen Daniel Day-Lewis in "Phantom Thread," Timothée Chalamet in "Call Me by Your Name" or Denzel Washington in "Roman J. Israel, Esq.," meaning I have some homework to do before my Oscar predictions post, but it'll definitely be a huge hill for those three to climb to top Oldman when it comes to my personal opinion of who should win because I certainly have a soft spot for actors who are able to perfectly portray a historical figure. I think Daniel Day-Lewis playing Abraham Lincoln in Spielberg's "Lincoln" was a performance for the ages and I personally liked Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy in 2016's "Jackie" nearly as much. Gary Oldman portraying Winston Churchill is another performance for the ages that belongs right in the same conversation as those two as he magically transforms into Churchill for this role, not just in looking just like him, but sounding just like him and nailing his mannerisms. Sure, the makeup people get a lot of credit for his looks, but major props have to be given to Oldman for his disappearing act.

I will admit that I'm not an expert when it comes to Winston Churchill, so I couldn't immediately say without research that Oldman pulled this off perfectly like I was able to when Daniel Day-Lewis played Lincoln. With the latter role, I felt like the filmmakers had gone back in time and recruited the real Abraham Lincoln to play himself in their movie. Luckily with Churchill, this thing called the internet exists and he lived recently enough where I can listen to his speeches and look up pictures of him so that my ignorant American self can be better educated on exactly how Churchill looks and sounds. And yeah. Gary Oldman is perfect. Which is crazy because Oldman as is looks and sounds nothing like Churchill. I look at him and I still see Commissioner Gordon. So the transformation is amazing. Even more impressive than his transformation into Sirius Black. But even before I did my research, I was rather fascinated by this character. I loved how human and conflicted he was the whole movie in figuring out what the right thing to do was. He didn't even expect to become Prime Minister in the first place and in many instances he was a fairly unlikable fellow. Thus his character arc in the movie really moved me in the way a true biopic should.

Yes, we know how this all ends. Because, well, spoiler alert, Britain didn't surrender to Germany or make a peace treaty with Hitler. The soldiers at Dunkirk were saved. Over 300,000 of them. The Allies went onto win World War II. But I love myself a good historical drama that dives into history of how this came about. "Darkest Hour" did just that and I was fascinated to learn more of the details behind this story while getting a look into what life was like for Winston Churchill, both on a personal level as well as his work as Prime Minister. I wanted the movie "Dunkirk" to teach me of the history surrounding these events and the fact that it didn't was one of the major reasons why I was disappointed. Thus I was rather pleased when "Darkest Hour" did exactly what I had wished "Dunkirk" would've done by teaching me about these events. There's approximately zero minutes of war scenes in "Darkest Hour," but that's OK because we got 106 minutes of those in "Dunkirk." When the time came, I was able to mentally plug in "Dunkirk" and thus I was perfectly satisfied. While I'm not going back on my opinion of "Dunkirk" on its own, I will say that "Darkest Hour" and "Dunkirk" would make for a great double feature and for this I am awarding "Darkest Hour" a 9/10.