Not Our Finest Hour
<em>Darkest Hour</em> presents Churchill as a Trump-like populist—and in the process, elides the lessons contemporary audiences might learn from his wartime leadership.
Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, is, in the worst sense of the term, an insightful movie critic. The day after Christmas he left a viewing of Darkest Hour having concluded that yes, Donald Trump is a leader of the Churchillian stamp. He has a limited point. In a twisted way, the profoundly misleading portrayal of Churchill in Darkest Hour is in sync with Huckabee’s spectacularly sycophantic tweet.
The actors in the film do their job well, and Kazuhiro Tsuji’s prosthetic that gives Gary Oldman Churchillian jowls is an amazing thing to behold. Unfortunately, the movie goes downhill from there.
All movies on historical subjects take liberties with the facts, sometimes harmlessly so and
