Darkest Hour Trailer Reveals Gary Oldman As An Unrecognizable Winston Churchill

Clear the way, everybody—Gary Oldman has strapped on his Oscar jowls. 

With the weight of the world on his shoulders and tons of bombs soaring down overhead, Darkest Hour is the story of British statesman Winston Churchill, played in a fantastic transformation by character actor Gary Oldman.

The film comes from English director Joe Wright, known for previously directing Atonement, Pride & Prejudice, and Hanna. The filmmaker has proven himself uncommonly capable of taking seemingly staid historical stories and filming them in a unique, impressionistic way, and the trailer is a showcase for his interesting style. 

The story of Darkest Hour follows Churchill, the newly-installed Prime Minister, navigating his government and the press on the eve of World War II, deliberating the nation's options in the face of incoming aggression. Many cigarettes are smoked, rude gestures are made, and—spoilers—everybody goes to war.

Early reviews have garnered praise for Darkest Hour, earning it an 83% score on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of this writing.

In addition to Oldman, Darkest Hour features the talents of Lily James as Elizabeth Layton, Ben Mendelsohn as King George VI, Kristin Scott Thomas as Clementine Churchill, and Stephen Dillane as Viscount Halifax.

Darkest Hour begins its theatrical rollout in select cities on November 22. Check out the trailer for the war drama above, and peep the moody poster down below. 

The trailer has a pointed shoutout to sister WWII movie Dunkirk, as though to signal to the audience, "hey, there's a lot of stories in this war." But let's hope they're not using that movie as a benchmark for accuracy—see what we mean in our feature on eight times Dunkirk got history all wrong.