CHURCHILL follows Britain’s iconic Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the days before the D-Day landings in June 1944. As allied forces stand on the south coast of Britain, poised to invade Nazi occupied Europe, they await Churchill’s decision on whether the invasion will actually move ahead.

After stirring the British through the blitz and the Battle of Britain, poor old Winnie is knackered and someone clapped out. A lush and slightly demented

An impulsive, sometimes bullying personality and bulldog stubborn – fearful, obsessive and hurting – he is fearful of repeating, on his disastrous command, the mass slaughter of 1915, when over 500,000 soldiers were killed on the beaches of Gallipoli.

He has a recurrent nightmare of the sea in red current, a sea awash with blood, the tragic tide of events lapping at the shores of his existence,

Obsessed with fulfilling historical greatness, Churchill is also faced with constant criticism from his political opponents; General Eisenhower and Field Marshal Montgomery.

CHURCHILL is directed by Australian Jonathan Teplitzky from an original screenplay by British historian Alex von Tunzelmann, her first crack at a feature.

There’s more of a shake of the spear to Shakespeare classics in this film.

Brian Cox, as Churchill, does a King Lear in praying for inclement weather to ditch D Day, and his behaviour towards his wife and secretary is very much of the mind boggling mind boggled type which Lear lashed on his daughters.

In this way we can view Miranda Richardson’s rendition of Clementine very Goneralish, James Purefoy is a pure joy as the King, but John Slattery seems a miscast as General Eisenhower.

Julian Wadham as Monty doing his very best Henry V in a scene reminiscent of We Happy Few.

The most intriguing character for me was South African Field Marshal Jan Smuts played by Richard Durden. He is written like and played as a kind of Kent figure, to keep the Lear allusion going. I suspect this bloke could fuel a movie on his own – probably a mini series.