Starring Brian Cox. Rated PG

As you might expect, Churchill focuses on the larger-than-life British leader at the height (and depth) of his reign. The film sticks to the events leading up to and immediately following the Allied invasion of Nazi-held Europe on June 6, 1944. No battles are depicted, but the movie could have been called The Longest Day, because its 92 minutes are unusually arduous.

Director Jonathan Teplitzky, a Brit-TV veteran whose feature The Railway Man was another tedious historical drama, certainly got the hardest part right: Scottish Bourne survivor Brian Cox nails Sir Winston’s bulldog profile and distinctively vowel-laden speech, without resorting to caricature. And the script from relative newcomer Alex von Tunzelmann works hard to show us the Great Man’s feet of English clay. Too hard, as the movie is determined to make us worship someone already on the way out in the middle of his finest hour.

The screenplay simplifies Churchill’s relationship with Allied commander Dwight Eisenhower, played here by Mad Men’s Roger Slattery, who doesn’t resemble Ike but captures some of the sharp canniness usually missed in portrayals of the soft-spoken general. It suggests that the prime minister bitterly opposed Operation Overlord—the invasion of occupied Europe starting in Normandy—preferring to stick to the slow slog already under way in southern Europe. His hesitation here is presented as a guilty hangover from his role in the Gallipoli disaster of the First World War and the rout at Dunkirk just four years earlier. The film also elides Churchill’s fraught relationship with FDR, but does convey how the PM tried, and failed, to use the stuttering King George (James Purefoy) to yank back some power from the Americans.

Some elements are more interesting than others, with the best parts involving Winny’s battle of wits with his equally volatile wife, Clementine, played with gusto by Miranda Richardson. But here, too, the director weighs down every gesture and utterance with pregnant pauses, suffocating close-ups, slo-mo tracking shots, voice-overs taken from earlier scenes, and, of course, a relentless orchestral score. When the cinematically billowing smoke has finally cleared, you may suspect that it was Churchill’s cigar Teplitzky cared most about. And sometimes a cigar is even less than a cigar.