DARKEST HOUR *

When Meryl Streep won her third Oscar for playing Margaret Thatcher in "The Iron Lady" it was as much for her make-up as it was for her acting, (it's actually one of her least interesting performances; more mimicry than anything else). The same can't be said of Gary Oldman's turn as Winston Churchill in Joe Wright's "Darkest Hour". It's a phenomenal performance that demolishes all previous Churchills. Yes, he looks the part thanks again to his hugely talented make-up artists and he has the voice off pat, but more importantly he gets inside Churchill's heart and head which is, perhaps, something of a surprise considering the material he's been given to work with is really rather third-rate.

Wright's film, which simply covers the month of May 1940 when Churchill was elected Prime Minister and saw the evacuation at Dunkirk has every cliche in the book including a disastrous scene when Winston decides to ride the Underground for the first time in order to gauge public opinion. This sequence is positively embarrassing though Oldman just about manages to carry it off. Elsewhere the film is very unevenly acted. The men have the best of it with both Ben Mendelsohn and Ronald Pickup impressing as the King and Neville Chamberlin respectively. On the other hand, Kristin Scott Thomas isn't given enough to do as a rather genteel Clemmie and Lily James makes for a very dull secretary. So then, very much a hit and miss affair worth seeing for Oldman's Oscar-winning performance, (they may as well put his name on it now), providing you are prepared for another lame history movie and Wright's poorest picture to date.