After decades of disappearing into performances, only to be rewarded with a single Academy Award nomination five years ago, Gary Oldman is finally making an unabashed grab for his long-deserved Oscar with Darkest Hour. The film sees Oldman sinking into the grotesque latex flesh of Winston Churchill at the beginning of his term as Prime Minister, when England was teetering on the edge of entering World War II. The actor does not waste his shot at delivering some iconic speeches.
Joe Wright directed the film, and anyone familiar with his work (Atonemnent, Anna Karenina) will pick up on that pretty quickly. His go-to prestige aesthetic—a modelesque British brunette dropped into achingly beautiful period sets—is on full display (though here he’s traded out three-time collaborator Keira Knightley for Lily James).
Though we got a Churchill movie just last month with Brian Cox starring in the aptly-titled Churchill, for now it seems likely that Darkest Hour will end up being the Capote to that film’s Infamous. You can judge for yourself above with the first trailer. Darkest Hour hits theaters November 22.