Churchill (2017) Review

An intimate look into the 96 hours before D-Day and what Winston Churchill was getting up to, supported by his wife and trying to deal with the situations as they unfolded.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Brian Cox was outstanding in the film, he is constantly on-screen as Winston Churchill and is extremely engaging. Showing a range of emotions as the powerful man must let others make the decisions when many young men are about to head into battle. Will the weather hold off and can he actually keep his mouth shut. Miranda Richardson was very good as Clementine his wife and really managed to put him in his place at times.

It was interesting to see the build up (or should that be supposed build up) towards D-Day and what Churchill was going through has he battled his demons as well. He wanted to go with the men fighting which I guess is a pretty remarkable thing now, cannot really imagine any recent Prime Minster wanting to do something like that. We get the disagreements with the American’s and trying to well keep everything well ticking over for England.

The build up throughout the film really was heading towards that speech, I am hoping for anyone in England you don’t need to even think about which one. It has been used so many times over the years in many different adverts and is still very inspiring to this day. The film did leave me wanting to know even more about Churchill though and delve deeper into the man regarded as the greatest Briton of all time.

Constantly having a cigar in his hand and that was certainly something you link to his character, some rather amusing lines in the film and that was a good thing to watch and enjoy in all honesty. I was impressed with the pace of the film as well, not on the long side either but I thought it was spot on in length for the story it was telling.

But as I mentioned before I was left wanting more and to know more about the great man, which doesn’t really happen in this film. We get a snapshot and then the flashback to 1944 and that build up to D-Day. Cox’s performance is the outstanding thing about it for me though, as I actually kept forgetting it was him, I mean that in the best way possible just due to him looking a lot more like Churchill.

I liked the added little part with the typist who was doing the speech with him and freaked out when he said all of the men would die and that was a turning point when he realised he must give the people hope, the wives, mothers and children left behind. It was powerful, that a woman could have such an impact like that on such a powerful man especially after he had shouted at her many times before. It was a nice little moment, finding out if he had survived or not certainly added to the story.

I do always wonder with a film like this though how much of it is true and how much is just for the screen, something I always try to find out when coming out of the cinema. Lacking at times for the film as a whole but that performance from Cox did impress me!