Gary Oldman is the frontrunner for next year's Best Actor at the Oscars, if the first reviews for Darkest Hour are to be believed.
Joe Wright's biopic stars Oldman as Winston Churchill during his first days as Prime Minister and the challenges he faced during World War II, and it sounds like it could be the role to win him his first-ever Oscar.
He has only been nominated once before for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (losing out to The Artist's Jean Dujardin), but after Darkest Hour's premiere at Telluride Film Festival, Oldman could be set for another nomination.
We've rounded up the first reviews below.
"The performance is unlike anything Oldman has previously delivered, in part because this time, the character is one we presume to know so well from archival footage, photographs and radio recordings. And yet, the master actor rejects mere mimicry, constructing from the ground up a full-bodied and impressively nuanced version of the historical figure."
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"Few would argue that Oldman isn't one of the finest actors of his generation, but this is a tour de force portrayal that will define his body of work for decades to come. And when you take account those countless portrayals over the years this makes the film and Oldman's performance something extraordinary."
"One of the few actors whose performances are regularly big enough to be seen from space, Oldman has met his match. Here, for the first time, the star has found a character who's larger than life itself; no matter how much hot air Oldman breathes into this balloon, it's never going to pop. His Churchill might be the first lead performance in film history that's delivered entirely in shouts, but it works."
"Oldman enthusiastically plays right into this with a boisterous performance that, physically and vocally, may not match up precisely with the Churchill the public can still behold in any number of vintage newsreels and recordings but which, ironically, may help win the old lion a new generation of fans."
Darkest Hour is released in US cinemas on November 22 and UK cinemas on January 12, 2018.
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Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
