SummaryJune 1944. Allied Forces stand on the brink: a million soldiers are secretly assembled on the south coast of Britain, poised to invade Nazi-occupied Europe. One man stands in their way: Winston Churchill. Fearful of repeating, on his disastrous command, the mass slaughter of 1915, when over 500,000 soldiers were killed on the beaches of ...
SummaryJune 1944. Allied Forces stand on the brink: a million soldiers are secretly assembled on the south coast of Britain, poised to invade Nazi-occupied Europe. One man stands in their way: Winston Churchill. Fearful of repeating, on his disastrous command, the mass slaughter of 1915, when over 500,000 soldiers were killed on the beaches of ...
Cox masterfully captures Churchill’s contradictory nature, obsessive dutifulness to queen and country, and a volatility born out of fear, desperation and impending loss.
Cox is rudely magnificent, capturing not just the wilfulness of the man but the nagging self-doubt at his inner core. But the film is just too bloodless to be fully convincing.
This is not a movie for the cognitively impaired. It presents a window into the human side of the decisions made leading up to D-Day, and the conflicts they raised. These conflicts were personal, political, and societal, and are not something that can be expressed in either 140 characters, or 90 minutes.
Don't expect a movie about D-Day, or war. Enjoy the window into politics at all levels, and the inherent complexity humanity injects into the process.
Highly recommended. Absolutely fantastic movie. I'm going back again tomorrow. The historic accuracy in this work is first class. A true eye opener. Brian's portrayal of Churchill was truly inspiring and had me hooked from the first scene. The attention to detail in his mannerisms were completely on point.
Churchill seems a hasty addition to this Summer of War, with a valid point of view and portrayal, but without the budget or scope to be anything more than a lot of shouted arguments — a stage play with very pretty historical backdrops.
Cox’s delivery of Churchill’s “We will fight on the beaches” D-Day speech surely ranks among the best, but it’s a problem when a narrative feature’s most powerful scenes are drawn from historical text.
The movie’s ambition is the good news. The bad news is that it is a hash, choosing to jumble the historical record and frame a Churchill bout with depression against the D-Day invasion of France by Allied forces.
Je ne m'y attendais pas mais il s'agit du meilleur film sur Churchill, sensiblement au dessus de l'autre Churchill, celui des Heures Sombres certes magnifiquement interprété par Gary Oldman mais pas aussi convaincant néanmoins, pas aussi dense que le magistral tour de force de Brian Cox, excellent acteur au demeurant mais qui signe ici le rôle de sa carrière, le rôle de toute une vie d'acteur, assurément ! d'autant qu'il est doublé ici par notre gloire nationale de la VF à nous, Jacques Frantz, tout simplement parfait.
L'autre Churchill se déroulait en juin 1940, celui-ci se passe quelques jours avant le Débarquement et met en lumière les doutes et les craintes du Premier Ministre britannique qui se remémore alors le désastre de Gallipoli en 1915 dont il fut l'instigateur... car si l'opération Overlord était indéniablement audacieuse, elle était très risquée également : elle aurait pu tourner au désastre !
Ainsi, ce portrait très humain d'un vieux lion en proie à l'incertitude, d'un vieil homme usé par déjà quatre années de guerre... une pression énorme et en même temps un dirigeant qui veut encore se mêler de tout alors que "Ike" le Commandant Suprême des Forces Alliées est désormais "l'homme de la situation"...
En dehors de Brian Cox, époustouflant, le reste de la distribution n'est pas en reste, de même que l'élégante musique de Lorne Balfe et si on peut reprocher un film un côté encore très emphatique, on apprécie sa belle densité (une heure et demi seulement) qui préserve le rythme, les enjeux, les caractères sans jamais ennuyer : on est au contraire fasciné, ému et très admiratif.
La période était agitée et imprévisible, la guerre totale, les décisions étaient lourdes de conséquences et le moral et les discours étaient aussi importants que les grandes offensives ; or on sait et la postérité le saura pour toujours, que le grand homme Winston Churchill a porté sa grande nation en des temps difficiles et impitoyables. Mais voilà que je fais dans l'emphase et la grandiloquence, moi aussi... comme Winston (et le Capitaine Haddock, je vais me resservir un verre !).
Better than I had heard. Well acted. Not for action junckies. Unfortunately, a real disservice to the Canadian Army, which was part of the joint command, responsible for one of the five landing beaches and provided a quarter of the paratroopers, and suffered 15% of the first day deaths. People have complained of other historical inaccuracies; the ones that dishonor men who fought and died are most egregious. However, I was captivated by the film.
I have to give Brian Cox all the credit for this performance, as he puts his heart & soul into this. Unfortunately I can't say the rest for the movie itself. Just like what I said about "Mr. Holmes", this could've been a TV movie, not a feature film. Nothing too exciting or interesting happens in this story about the paranoia The British Bulldog faced. Oh and by the way, the good guys won the war. Just in cause you didn't know, according to the film.
An uneven account of much of this man's history.
Brian Cox was not too bad but the screenplay over-highlighted Churchill's few positives and all but touched upon his many serious flaws as a human being.