MOST BRILLIANT

NTIL this year, perhaps the greatest piece of movie-making about Dunkirk was only part of a movie: it was a breathtaking sequence of the massive World War II evacuation, filmed in one astonishing, five-minute take that dramatically punctuated the movie Atonement, directed by

Joe Wright.

Now Wright returns with a fully fledged Dunkirk film: Darkest Hour is already receiving awards chatter for Gary Oldman’s deliciously crafty portrayal of the film’s main subject, a newly minted British prime minister named Winston Churchill.

But this isn’t just film-asbackdrop for a towering central performance. Wright brings his signature good taste – including sumptuous sets and elegantly staged set pieces – to an enterprise

Uin which Oldman’s hugely enjoyable star turn is equalled by similarly well-judged performances from Kristin Scott Thomas and Ben Mendelsohn.

Handsomely filmed, intelligently written, accented with just a dash of outright hokum, Darkest Hour ends a year already laden with terrific films about the same subject, including the winsome comedy-drama Their Finest, and Christopher Nolan’s boldly visual interpretive history Dunkirk, and ties it up with a big, crowd-pleasing bow.

Darkest Hour begins in

May 1940, when the war is already under way in Europe, accommodationist forces still hold sway in Britain, and German troops have taken France, setting their sights on the island across the English Channel. When Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is forced to resign, the vagrant winds of fortune blow in Churchill’s general direction: although he has recently been in the “wilderness” after a disastrous political career, he’s deemed the most acceptable choice among flawed contenders.

“It’s not a gift,” he says grumpily when the PM position is dangled before him. “It’s revenge.”

As a portrait of leadership at its most brilliant, thoughtful and morally courageous, Darkest Hour is the movie we need right now. – The Washington Post