Trading showiness for human connection, CHURCHILL is far superior to DARKEST HOUR. The dialogue might range from poetic bluster (“My job is not to fight, not to die…I must exist”) to rather cumbersome exposition (“We’ve only a three day window before the tides change, making its possible to land our craft”) but Brian Cox’s portrayal of Churchill really manages to tap raw emotion rather than be a caricature. He may have been the icon, the rallying cry, of the British nation (despite being half American), but Churchill was not a well man by 1944, nor was he infallible, with the allied high command, chiefly Eisenhower (John Slattery) considering him a liabilty, a relic from another time, another type of warfare. Here, Winston Churchill’s angry blustering is shown to mask his insecurity, vulnerability and fear of at the very real prospect of losing everything. It tends to feel a bit TV Movie, but it gets under the skin of “The Greatest Britain”. SSP