Churchill review

Churchill follows Brian Cox as the ex-Prime Minister in the days leading up to the D-Day landings.

Every few years there is a film released in June which is in some way about D-Day. The best of these in recent years was Edge of Tomorrow (or whatever it's called this week) in 2014. The reason this was the best of the recent D-Day films is that on the surface, it looks like a sci-fi action, but when you actually think about it, you realise it's ties to D-Day. Churchill, however, does nothing original with the historical event.

If you've ever watched a BBC or Channel 4 historical movie, the you will have seen something very similar to this film. I'm not saying that they can't be original, just that this is typical of what you'd expect from them. The problem is that I can see what the director was trying to go for. There are several scenes where Churchill is walking on the beach mournfully, remembering a similar operation that didn't work during the first world war. These sequences would be more effective if they weren't handled so ham-fistedly. Brian Cox is a great actor, and he's great in this too, so take advantage of having him in your film and let him do the heavy lifting in regards to the portrayal of his haunted nature.

In short: Brian Cox is great.