Into the Storm

Into the Storm (2009) is a British TV historical drama directed by Thaddeus O'Sullivan — watch online on iFILM. Brendan Gleeson plays Winston Churchill across the war years, from his appointment as Prime Minister in May 1940 through the victory that was followed, almost immediately, by an election defeat in 1945. The film is a sequel to The Gathering Storm (2002), picking up exactly where that portrait left off.

Gleeson's Churchill isn't built on speeches and cigars. He plays a man grinding through exhaustion, carrying decisions that cost lives by the thousands, while his marriage to Clemmie (Janet McTeer) absorbs the weight he can't show the Cabinet. Iain Glen appears as Montgomery, James D'Arcy as a young Randolph Churchill. O'Sullivan keeps the scale intimate for a story this large — and that restraint suits Gleeson's performance better than spectacle would have. Stream Into the Storm (2009) online on iFILM.