Churchill follows one of history’s greatest personalities, Britain’s iconic Prime Minister Winston Churchill (Brian Cox) in the days before the D-Day landings, the operation that set in motion the liberation of northwestern Europe from Nazi occupation, and ultimately contributed to the Allied victory on the Western Front.
In June 1944, Allied Forces stood on the brink with a million soldiers secretly assembled on the south coast of Britain, poised to invade Nazi-occupied Europe, awaiting Churchill’s go-ahead.
For this iconic figure was a man of immense contrasts. Churchill, this man of great political nous and rousing speeches, was also a man who faced political ridicule, military failure and had to cope with a speech impediment.
He was an impulsive and sometimes bullying personality – and, also, a man fearful of repeating, on his disastrous command, the mass slaughter of 1915, when over 500,000 soldiers were killed on the beaches of Gallipoli. He was also obsessed with fulfilling historical greatness: his destiny.
All this is underscored by the rejection so deeply formed by his father’s utter distance and indifference to him.
At this point in the war, Churchill is exhausted, a shadow of the hero who has resisted Hitler’s Blitzkrieg. His greatest fear is that if the D-Day landings fail, he’ll be remembered as the architect of carnage.
Takes the audience on a journey of discovery into the true nature of this herculean character
In the meantime, his political opponents are sharpening their knives. The American General Eisenhower (John Slattery) and Field Marshal Montgomery (Julian Wadham), the British commander of the Allied ground forces, are increasingly frustrated by Churchill’s attempts to stop the invasion, and it is clear that reigning monarch George VI (James Purefoy) must intervene.
Only the unflinching support of Churchill’s brilliant, unflappable wife Clementine (Miranda Richardson) can halt the Prime Minister’s physical and mental collapse at this most crucial juncture of the war.
Churchill takes the audience on a journey of discovery into the true nature of this herculean character as he negotiated the tribulations of war, while celebrating the strength of his wife, ‘Clemmie’ – his backbone and total confidant, indeed the love that inspired him to greatness.
Cox joins a list of luminaries in bringing Churchill to the screen (among whom Richard Burton, Albert Finney, Brendan Gleeson, Timothy Spall, Michael Gambon and John Lithgow). Yet the film is one of the few to depict the crushing doubts the statesman faced before one of the greatest efforts during World War II. Cox projects all his trials and tribulations to great effect, in a performance that is highly praised.
Variety chief film critic Owen Gleiberman says that: “In a historical biopic, nothing can shed light on a legendary figure – or, at least, knock him off his plaster-saint pedestal – quite like being depicted as a stooge, a bully and a fool. In Churchill, Brian Cox plays Winston Churchill with roaring conviction, all fire and bluster.” Time Out London’s Tom Huddleston describes Cox as “rudely magnificent, capturing not just the wilfulness of the man but the nagging self-doubt at his inner core”.
The movie is directed by Jonathan Teplitzky from an original screenplay by British historian Alex von Tunzelmann.
The film also stars Richard Durden as South African Field Marshal Jan Smuts and Ella Purnell as Churchill’s young secretary, Helen Garrett.