On review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 49% based on 116 reviews, with an average rating of 5.2/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Churchill gets sterling work out of Brian Cox in the leading role, but it isn't enough to overcome a muddled and ultimately unsuccessful approach to an incredible real-life story."[12] On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average rating to reviews, the film has a score of 44 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[13]
Noted Churchill biographer Andrew Roberts gave the film a scathing review, saying that a series of historical errors made Winston Churchill almost unrecognisable. After praising the film's acting, photography, and music, he wrote that the film failed due to a script filled with blatant errors, grossly mis-characterizing Churchill on numerous points. About the film's author, who, while a historian, is not a WWII scholar, he wrote, "The only problem with the movie – written by the historian Alex von Tunzelmann – is that it gets absolutely everything wrong. Never in the course of movie-making have so many specious errors been made in so long a film by so few writers."[14] His review went into detail on numerous errors, such as the false portrayal of Churchill as anti-American, or claims that he dithered about Operation Overlord (the Normandy landing), or the marital strife with his wife, Clementine. None of these points have a basis in fact, according to Roberts.
Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph rated the film 4/5 stars and said that "Brian Cox dazzles in a scalpel-sharp, timely lesson in political leadership", while Peter Bradshaw, writing for The Guardian, noted that "Miranda Richardson shrewdly plays Churchill's wife Clemmie: imperious, exasperated, gimlet-eyed", and rated the film 3/5 stars. In The Independent rated the film 3/5 stars and wrote "There are elements of both King Lear and of Colonel Blimp about Cox's Churchill. Like Blimp, he's a man out of time, accused of trying to fight a modern war with a mindset stuck years in the past. Like Lear, he is an old man, raging against the elements." In Time Out magazine, Tom Huddleston rated the film 3/5 stars and wrote "Cox is rudely magnificent, capturing not just the wilfulness of the man but the nagging self-doubt at his inner core." Peter Travers, writing for Rolling Stone, said Brian Cox's performance "cannot be faulted. It's a master class in acting", and gave the film 3/4 stars.[15] Gary Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Brian Cox's towering performance in Churchill is worthy of the great man himself".[16] In the Radio Times, Alan Jones said Cox "gives a tremendous performance as the charismatic politician who inspired Great Britain to resist Adolf Hitler."[17]
Ignatiy Vishnevetsky of The A.V. Club described the film as "inert, decorous, and almost absurdly repetitive," and wrote: "All too often, it toes the line that separates legitimately stupid movies from ones that merely presume that the viewer is stupid."[18]
Brian Cox said that he talked to military experts from the Sandhurst military academy about Churchill's own plan to invade Europe, and that "... they said it would have probably shortened the war by six months."[19]
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