This was a fun exercise in being treated like an intelligent adult and then having that all ripped away.

Did the world need another movie about a white man being a hero? Naw. Was it still enjoyable? Yep.

I’m a big fan of the Netflix show The Crown so when this movie came out I was excited to fill in some of the gaps I had around the character of Winston Churchill. And it filled them in and then poked some more holes and filled those as well.

The acting was nice. The pacing was nice. The colors were, not as dark as I expected for a movie in this period and set in London. While the movie could have been sad and depressing and heavy it didn’t let itself dive too far down into the dark before giving us a hopeful, strong move forward.

So that’s why it’s such a letdown that they threw in scenes for drama and development taking a story based on truth to the extreme side of non-fiction and undermining the actual events. I didn’t need a “Captain, my captain” scene to give me confidence in his gaining confidence. I didn’t need a not quite romance subplot. This wasn’t a boring story so why did they feel the need to spice it up with easily verifiable falsehoods? People may argue that it was symbolic of the longer, less screen-friendly events but they made it the pivotal, necessary scene which just makes the whole movie feel less to me. I don’t mind tweaks. I do mind when a movie wouldn’t work without the fictional bits.

Verdict: 4/5, still a good movie with good acting but I won’t watch it again