“We shall never… surrender!”

It’s safe to say that the summer movie season is pretty much over, which means only one thing: award season is upon us! Oscar-caliber movies and performances are going to be hitting us full force, and one of them that might have escaped your radar when the first trailer dropped is the movie Darkest Hour (2017).

Darkest Hour stars Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill just a few days before he became Prime Minister of England, when he investigates a negotiated peace treaty with Hitler’s Germany.

Like Woody Harrelson in the trailers for LBJ (2017), Oldman is almost unrecognizable in this film (that is, at least, in appearance). While you without a doubt have got to hand it to the makeup and prosthetics that helped transform the actor into the historical figure, Gary Oldman’s portrayal here should not be disregarded even in the slightest. You can see in this trailer how he completely embodies and actually becomes Winston Churchill, and just from hearing and watching him speak a handful of dialogue here, the acting already looks masterful and powerful. Gary Oldman has always been a terrific actor, but he usually doesn’t take on this type of role, so it will be interesting to see just what he does with this leader who was larger than life. Oldman is sure to get an Academy Award recognition come the Oscars, and that sentence can get overplayed whenever we simply just see a trailer, but I think this one is a sure bet.

This is not the first movie this year to center on Winston Churchill. Brian Cox (The Bourne Identity (2002)) portrayed him earlier this year in June in the limited release of Churchill (2017) from Salon Pictures, also starring Miranda Richardson (The Phantom of the Opera (2004)) and John Slattery (Spotlight (2015)). Don’t be surprised to see Cox mentioned in the Oscar nominations either.

Directed by Joe Wright (The Soloist (2009), Pride & Prejudice (2005)), Darkest Hour will star Gary Oldman (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)), Lily James (Cinderella (2015)), Ben Mendelsohn (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)), Kristin Scott Thomas (The English Patient (1996)), Stephen Dillane (Game of Thrones (2011-)), and Ronald Pickup (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011)), and enters theaters this fall on November 22, 2017.

See Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill in the first trailer here!

Darkest Hour Trailer