It’s June 1944, and Winston Churchill (Brian Cox) cuts a less impressive figure than he did when he was inspiring the people of Britain as they came under attack from Nazi forces years earlier. In fact, he finds himself listing in the margins of an Allied high command led by Dwight D. Eisenhower (John Slattery) as they plan Operation Overlord and the Dunkirk landings. If you’re looking for this year’s Deep Impact/Armageddon showdown, it might just be films about Winston Churchill. But quite aside from the arrival of Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour, starring Gary Oldman as Churchill in the early days of his premiership, later this year, Operation Overlord has already been treated with charm and a stiff upper lip in Their Finest‘s film-within-a-film, and is set to get the Christopher Nolan treatment in next month’s Dunkirk. But much like its portrayal of Churchill as a compassionate and self-aggrandizing figure, the film itself struggles to do anything remarkable in the process. Historian Alex von Tunzelmann, who formerly reviewed the historical accuracy of current films in her meticulous Reel History column for the Guardian, provides a suitably informed screenplay. There are two other standouts, the first of which is the magnificent Miranda Richardson, who seems alternately amused and exasperated at her husband’s assumptions that he might yet win the war single-handedly. Ironically, the second standout is James Purefoy, who gives himself 100% to his brief turn as King George VI, even though there’s no chance that anyone watching won’t immediately be reminded of Colin Firth in The King’s Speech. The scenes in which Cox plays against both Richardson and Purefoy are the highlights of the film. At other points, the film ends up grasping quite desperately for pathos, with an eleventh-hour introduction of personal stakes for Ella Purnell’s wide-eyed secretary and a preposterous moment of prayer from Cox, but in truth, many of its better emotional moments arise naturally from performance rather than the page. Churchill is in UK cinemas now.