Churchill

Churchill is depicted as a diminished, drooling buffoon and many who remember him as one of the great names and leaders during WWII will find this movie intolerable. At the end of the film after the credits you see some weaselly disclaimer about how the movie, although based on real people, may or may not have presented events as they really happened.

And so this movie marches on with its hit-piece agenda and the writer should be ashamed to marginalize such a noted figure with such a self-indulgent point of view. Did the writer teleport back in time and hover like Patrick Swayze in a room? Scene after scene shows Churchill as an anxious, alcoholic insecure man with no counterpoints to show him in a leadership role. I'm all for a certain angle for movies and political news shows, but this went too far and came off as an over-reach and simply an ego trip for a script.

Historical accuracy aside, the movie fails in other ways. Besides the cringe-worthy buffoon angle, the music was simply overbearing and not needed in half the scenes. I wish I had brought some noise-canceling headphones to the movie theater. Scene after scene I was praying for just the dialogue to speak for itself without the watery musical underbed to drive it. Scene after scene I was praying for silence. It's as if the music was in love with itself. Well some of us weren't.

John Slattery, who was excellent in Mad Men, was a total miscast. Slattery simply did not have the gravitas to carry the role of Eisenhower.

The movie's only saving grace was Brian Cox, answering the misguided casting call for a needy, spiraling performance of Churchill. He runs away with the role, although an unfair role at that. How much more serving and evergreen it would have been if the character given to him was not so one-sided. But Cox delivers and many of the actors in his scenes simply wither. This would be the time for a well-deserved Oscar nomination for Cox, so blistering was his distressed portrayal of Churchill. Two other actors to hold their own in the movie was Miranda Richardson, who played her role with stoic and steely grace, and the actor who played Smuts, an understated yet praiseworthy performance.

All in all if you care about history, and understand that leaders have both greatness and weakness in decision-making, this movie did not flesh out those layers. Instead it comes off slamming the persona of a historic figure.

It's hard to understand the motivation of the makers of this movie in producing such an appalling and deliberate distortion of the facts. It is nothing but a hit piece intended to defame a great man. Don't waste one minute of your life on it.

Never..in the field of cinematography..has so much crap been made to be watched by so many people. When the DVD comes out we will see it on the beaches...see it in the wheelie bins...etc I was dying to say that so there you go.

Good points are that if you knew nothing about Churchill, this could pass as a good " based on real events" matinée movie. All the cast do as much as they needed to pay their mortgages...sometimes beautifully filmed and neatly directed...if sometimes it wallowed in it's own importance.

Now the bad points..totally and absurdly historically inaccurate. Badly written and all through tries to build up to a crescendo but falls flat every time.You leave the theatre no wiser of what went on and who Churchill really was. As much as I admire Brian Cox ( I think his portrayal as Hannibal Lecter is almost as good as Tony Hopkins...and that's a MASSIVE compliment) I think he was miscast.

They had a chance to show us the mind of one of the few people who changed the world ...and I walked out of the theatre cold and short changed.

Watch it on a wet day but cannot give more than a 4!!

I have often thought I would like to again experience watching films such as Aliens, The Thing, Saving Private Ryan or Blade Runner for the first time. All were exciting and entertaining. What am I served up with now? This tripe. Never mind factual issues, it is just plain boring. Churchill is, possibly, one of the worst films I have watched (well, I stopped after 50 minutes - my jaw was nearly dislocated with yawning). Dreadful. How was this ever released?

On the basis that other reviewers have very adequately covered the glaring objections to this film I will keep this brief.

In an action packed life of 80 years involving 2 world wars and one other significant war (The Boer War), a momentous political career, a life filled with both failure as well phenomenal achievements, that the filmmakers should think it necessary to MAKE UP a story about Churchill seems like the pinnacle of perversity. It just defies any logic hitherto known to mankind.

"Poetic license" is nothing new in movie making. However this movie is more like a "license to kill", kill a man's reputation, kill the concept of history, and kill the truth. The preservation of actual history in the light of revisionism is difficult enough without the general public being exposed to downright lies to further confuse and deceive them.

I give this movie a 1 as a protest, in the probably forlorn hope that if enough people do the same to all movies that mess around with history, movie makers will get the message and steer their movies in a way that treats people and history responsibly.