Last year the film Dunkirk told the story of Great Britain's most anxious moments from the point of view of various British soldiers, sailors, and civilians helping to get the British Expeditionary Force off the beaches to fight another day. Had these people not done their job on those beaches Winston Churchill's moments here would either have never happened or would have been an empty gesture of defiance. No doubt had the Wehrmacht successfully invaded and occupied the United KIngdom, Winston Churchill would have been shot post haste by the Nazi occupiers.

But because the job was done at Dunkirk Winston Churchill got to do his. After the Nazi invasions of Denmark and Norway, Neville Chamberlain's wartime government was ready to go, but the only Tory that the Labour Party would serve under was Winston Churchill who had been consigned to the back benches for most of the 30s. Labour itself was tinged with pacifism early on and Churchill was the one who had consistently warned of the danger's Hitler's rearmed Germany posed.

Nevertheless events made it a 'close run thing' as another British prime minister of another century described a crisis he faced. In Churchill's cabinet were a number of potential appeasers and their choice for prime minister was Chamberlain's former Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax played by Stephen Dillane. If the members of that cabinet had their way Halifax would have been prime minister and would have sought a negotiated peace.

Gary Oldman has Churchill down perfect with all the bulldog defiance that comes through in those old WW2 era newsreels I well remember. No one else in Great Britain would have pursued the policies he did at that time. He gave the British people the blood, toil, tears, and sweat he promised and Great Britain and its Commonwealth partners carried on alone until the following year Hitler attacked the Soviet Union and the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Oldman got a well deserved Best Actor Oscar.

Best scene in the film is when the aristocratic Churchill goes into the London Underground for a sampling of public opinion. Even with the memories of the stalemate in the trenches of WW1 still in their memories as they are in the various Cabinet members like Lord Halifax they don't want to give up.

The next chapter of the saga is contained in the all star epic The Battle Of Britain which tells of the Royal Air Force beating back the German Luftwaffe while the bombs rained on British cities.

That's not to be missed either.

Have a real fondness for biopics, regardless of the treatment of history and their subjects for some. Consider Winston Churchill one of the most interesting and extraordinary 20th century, and history in general, figures and Gary Oldman one of the best actors working today that in recent years deserved more roles more worthy of his talents. The rest of the cast are also talented and while Joe Wright is hit and miss for me a few of his films are good to outstanding.

'Darkest Hour' was to me a very good film (the best of Joe Wright's films post-'Hanna'),and there is much more to it than the "Oscar bait" that a lot of films and performances getting multiple award attention get untruly and unfairly dismissed and what 'Darkest Hour' is likely to be dismissed as in the future. There is also much more to it than the universally acclaimed, and more than deservedly so, lead performance. Sure, its approach to history is dodgy to say the least (true of quite a number of biopics),but as a film on its own there are a lot of great qualities.

By all means 'Darkest Hour' is not perfect. The effects do look fake and personally really do wish that the female roles were as strongly written as the male ones. The male characters have a lot of meat to them, while Lily James especially has a role that's underwritten and almost thankless.

There are a couple of instances where the narrative isn't so strong. The phone conversation with Churchill and Roosevelt does contradict and distort Roosevelt himself and the relationship between the two. More problematic was the much criticised London-tube scene, feels like it goes on forever and takes the meaning of farcical too far.

Gary Oldman, nearly unrecognisable, is just extraordinary as Churchill and, although he is one of the best, most underrated and most versatile actors today with many great performances under his belt, this is his finest hour, a performance not just deserving of multiple awards but it is one deserving of an award sweep if it's not too late to be considered for an Oscar nomination (if so, he's been completely robbed). He makes Churchill a compellingly real figure, one that has struggles with his fame and power and not just a powerful figure important for his decisions, and not an impersonation or caricature.

The rest of the cast support him beautifully, Kristin Scott Thomas is affectingly elegant and stately, and her chemistry with Oldman is suitably tender. Ben Mendelssohn and Ronald Pickup (as a more conflicted Chamberlain as usually painted) are particularly good of the male support. Despite her charm, James doesn't have enough to her role to shine properly.

Visually, 'Darkest Hour' looks great. The period detail is both beautiful and atmospheric, the detail gotten spot on. The photography is inventive and striking. Wright's direction is not subtle (pretty bullish actually),Wright has never been known for subtlety, but it is a confident, playful and passionate directing job, with some emphasis on seriousness but not overly-so, some of his best since 'Atonement'. The music is stirring but at other times lyrically soothing and suitably sombre on occasions.

Furthermore, 'Darkest Hour' is thoughtfully and confidently scripted, while there are playful elements the darker and murkier side is emphasised more. Churchill's speeches have the inspiring power that they should do and the historical events that should wrench the gut do so but in a relatively restrained way. The story is compelling, what could have been stuffy and dull is actually lively and with a dark bullish and bold approach that still takes it seriously. It is very familiar and there is not much new to what we already know, but the approach 'Darkest Hour' takes is very much different to what one expects.

Overall, very good film with a few drawbacks but also an extraordinary performance from Oldman. 8/10 Bethany Cox

As a film this is quite good; it's not dull, the performances are good, the production design is excellent, the script is a professional piece of work and even Oldman's make-up is not too distracting.

However, something is not right. If most people get their history from movies, this is concerning. It's obvious that actual events occurred with real people and what they did and said but in a movie this gets pasteurized into what smart people believe will be more thrilling, more sympathetic, more emotional. That process necessarily alters things into something that is even anachronistically rendered and therefore not in the record.

This defect occurs frequently in this movie , so it's not history but myth making. A good example is Churchill's dive into the Underground to meet the common person to steel his resolve. Now Churchill had a mixed view of the average voter, and he was a patrician, but even that aside, he did not need to take a Tube train survey to gauge opinion.

This scene is poached from Shakespeare's Henry V where the king goes among his soldiers the night before battle to hear them and take courage from their strength. Steal from the best is a good policy, but it's not history. It's Shakespearean history and that trades effect for accuracy too.

The audience is given this scene to present Churchill as an instrument of democracy; he's acting for what the people want, therefore he's doing the right thing. It's called pandering.

Well, it is just a movie.