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Joe Wright

Darkest Hour – Joe Wright (2017)

IMDb.com

On the outbreak of WWII the British prime minister Chamberlain is replaced by Winston Churchill, without much enthusiasm of his own party. Especially when Churchill’s rhetoric is about fighting rather than trying to make peace, ways to get rid off him are soon thought of.

Starting optimistically it soon becomes clear that Churchill has to admit that he cannot overpower Germany and when 300.000 of his troops get trapped at the French border, an unpopular way of evacuating them is started (this evacuation is what the film Dunkirk is about).

Some of his ministers want to make peace with (meaning: surrender to) the Germans, but as the people seem to prefer fighting over flying, Churchill pushes his old tactics again.

The film makes a nice history lesson showing a hard politician who was also but a man.

Hanna * Joe Wright (2011)

I wanted to get an additional action thriller quickly and my eye fell on a beautiful teenager (Saoirse Ronan 1994!) and the name Cate Blanchett on a cover. “Hanna” is a film with strange contradictions. It opens nicely vague in some snowy nomansland where a father raises his daughter. The daughter, Hanna, has the choice to be hunted down when she is ready and at some point she is. Caught and transported to Marocco by some American agency, Hanna tries to meet her father in Berlin. Hanna being a teenage killing machine makes the film into an action film. However the atmosphere of the first part is good, the story is quite thin and the film contains too many “how”s and “why”s. Also Cate Blanchett is a bit disappointing with her Dana Scully haircut. The good part is Ronan though, this 16-year-old carries the entire film with good acting and nice fighting-scenes. The film is certainly not boring, just not very good.