Post by sgev1977 on Jan 18, 2019 20:23:08 GMT
At this point, Benedict Cumberbatch can probably play “arrogant but tormented visionary” in his sleep. From Sherlock Holmes to Alan Turing to Stephen Strange, he’s cornered the market on ferociously intelligent men continually let down by the minds around them, and he plays Cummings as a kind of frustrated wunderkind, a man convinced he could fix everything if someone would just hand him the damn keys to the shop and let him do his thing. Like the aging version of Jesse Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, his strategist is shown as perpetually exasperated by the inability of others to keep up with him, and while there are small moments added to humanize him (his pregnant wife, his continuous healthy behaviors), he’s still a man who lives for the intellectual battle of the campaign. Though the obvious parallel on this side of the pond would be Steve Bannon, Cummings is far too British (read: less of a messianic thug) for any one-to-one correlation. It’s a great portrayal, and pulls in the viewer with his self-confident magnetism even when the direction goes over the top.
This well-intentioned liberal history lesson is too pandering, turning its main villains Farage and Arron Banks into cartoons (again, the counterargument: They kind of are?) rather than people. But Graham’s script captures the nuances of Britain’s roiling identity crisis with deft insight, and the whole thing is packaged in such an enjoyably crowd-pleasing way that its flaws linger without dragging the proceedings down. It’s reductive and ham-fisted in its direction, sure, but still makes for a breezily engaging tale—like a good episode of The West Wing that just so happens to shine a light on one of the most controversial political upheavals in contemporary British history.
This well-intentioned liberal history lesson is too pandering, turning its main villains Farage and Arron Banks into cartoons (again, the counterargument: They kind of are?) rather than people. But Graham’s script captures the nuances of Britain’s roiling identity crisis with deft insight, and the whole thing is packaged in such an enjoyably crowd-pleasing way that its flaws linger without dragging the proceedings down. It’s reductive and ham-fisted in its direction, sure, but still makes for a breezily engaging tale—like a good episode of The West Wing that just so happens to shine a light on one of the most controversial political upheavals in contemporary British history.
tv.avclub.com/benedict-cumberbatch-turns-the-political-mess-of-brexit-1831850337