Although the time frames can be a bit confusing, writer Hugh Whitemore (who also wrote "The Gathering Storm") and director Thaddeus O'Sullivan keep our eyes firmly on Churchill as his strengths are almost perfectly mirrored by his flaws.
An unshakable faith in destiny keeps him stalwart while telling King George VI that a German invasion is to be expected, while hearing himself compared to Hitler by members of Parliament, while courting an evasive Franklin Roosevelt (Len Cariou).
But that same faith, hardened by the years of war, made his transition to peacetime leader difficult. The tyranny of greatness can become simple tyranny when the enemy has been defeated. This Churchill is lost without his war and fears that all he fought for -- the England of his youth and possibly his dreams -- will fall to internal change, his victory notwithstanding. When he is voted out of office mere months after winning what seemed an impossible-to-win war, his anger threatens to overtake his accomplishments and ruin his marriage.
If "Into the Storm" is, at times, overly simplistic (and the ending pure Hollywood), the issues it raises about the nature and cost of great leadership, about the unpredictable nature of war, are not.
Churchill's exhortations to hold hard and fight to the death are seen, with the luxury of hindsight, as torches lit to lead his people to inevitable victory. But as "Into the Storm" makes clear, victory was far from assured; Churchill's words and actions could just as easily have been a nation's eulogy. Which is something worth remembering.
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mary.mcnamara@latimes.com
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'Into the Storm'
Where: HBO
When: 9 p.m. Sunday
Rating: Unrated
