Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Brexit’ On HBO, Where Benedict Cumberbatch Campaigns For The UK To Leave The European Union

If there was anything that could have predicted the dissatisfaction that led to Donald Trump being elected president, it was the Brexit referendum in April of 2016. After a near-record turnout, the campaign to leave the European Union decisively defeated the Remain campaign, which was expected to win handily. A lot of that is due to the data-driven strategy of the Leave campaign’s main strategist, Dominic Cummings. Brexit is essentially a biopic of that election, with Benedict Cumberbatch playing Cummings. Read on to learn more…

BREXIT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: While many think that Boris Johnson, the mop-topped former mayor of London, was the face and voice of UK’s “Leave” movement during the 2016 Brexit campaign, the real person behind it was Dominic Cummings (Benedict Cumberbatch), an out-of-the-box strategist that was hired by the Vote Leave campaign to get it a leg up and be the campaign that represents the Leave vote in the general election.

Cummings wanted to boil down the decades-long desire of right-wing politicians to leave the European Union and its predecessors to a couple of key issues. While big-money members of the UK Independent Party (UKIP) like Aaron Banks (Lee Broadman) and the politicians in their pockets, like Nigel Farage (Paul Ryan) want to hammer multiple issues like how the EU facilitates easy immigration and how much the UK spends to be in the EU, Cummings’ wanted to avoid the immigration issue and keep things simple. He got an idea of what the people were looking for by chatting up people in pubs, and he decided that economics and the EU court rulings were the topics to lean on. Let Farage hammer on the immigration part, he figured; he was busy making a catchy slogan like “Take back control” and putting the much disputed amount of money the UK pays to the EU every month on the side of a bus.

Cummings’s other big strategy is to use data from Cambridge Analytica and AggregateIQ to find pockets of the population that never vote and campaign hard with those people. Through those companies, Cummings found millions of voters who never think their voices would be heard. That data-driven approach was sniffed at by the old-school politicians on Vote Leave’s board, but somehow Cummings convinces the chairman to quit while he takes on a less front-facing role (which was fine with him).

On the Remain side is Craig Oliver (Rory Kinnear), the director of communications for then-prime minister David Cameron, who has worked with Cummings in the past and knows where his old friend will dig for votes. But he still thinks the general populace has no desire to leave the EU. But when the election comes around in April, 2016, he’s as shocked as the rest of the world when the Leave side wins.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Political campaign-themed movies from The Candidate to Game Change to Primary Colors.

Performance Worth Watching: The movie pretty much revolves around Cumberbatch as Cummings; everyone else is just watching Benedict do his thing. As Cumberbatch is wont to do, his performance is full of anger that’s barely hidden by a personality that’s a bit off-center. Even though Cummings is a real person, Cumberbatch’s performance is very reminiscent of his turns as Sherlock Holmes and Patrick Melrose.

Memorable Dialogue: Cummings and Oliver run into each other on a tube platform and go have a beer. As they talk about political philosophies and how wearying the campaign is, Oliver mentions Cummings having his first child; he fears for the country that both of their children will grow up in. Cummings is too, but for different reasons. “The train coming down the tracks isn’t the one you expected; it’s not the one advertised on the board. Well, tough; it’s not even the one I imagined. But I accept it, and you can’t stop it. You’re right, there is a new politics in town; one that you cannot control.”

Single Best Shot: When Cummings and his wife find out that their baby has stopped growing, we get a patented “Cumberbatch Scream,” silent this time, as we see how Cummings is reacting to the news in his head.

Sex and Skin: Not that kind of movie. The only skin we see is the bald patch on top of Cummings’s head.

Our Take: Political movies based on real elections are always dicey, because portraying real people and complex campaigns in the span of 90 or so minutes tempts writers and directors into simplifying and fictionalizing, essentially dumbing down what really happened. Thankfully, Brexit, directed by Toby Haynes and written by James Graham, doesn’t really do that, mainly because Cummings already simplified the Leave side for voters, making it about the economy and control.

What the movie does well is explain the election in terms that non-Brits can understand, despite the fact that the film was originally produced for the UK’s Channel 4. And it does a good job of making Cummings at least a bit more well-rounded than being just a policy and data wonk. But Haynes, who previously directed Cumberbatch in Sherlock, leans too heavily on Cumberbatch’s capital-A acting tools like the inner monologue, stream-of-consciousness scribbles on walls and doors and general DGAF misanthropy. Cummings may have been and done all of those things, but in Cumberbatch’s hands, Brexit sometimes feels like less of a biography or document of a historic election and more of an acting exercise for its star.

The Remain side, especially Kinnear as Oliver, gets the short end of the stick, essentially being in the position everyone else seems to be in, which is reacting to Cummings’s genius as opposed to exploring their campaign’s missteps. You have to remember, like the 2016 presidential election in the U.S., Remain was expected to win the Brexit referendum easily, and they may have rested on their laurels. But we don’t see any of that here, because the movie is more about Cummings than anything else.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Brexit is an OK document of the shocking election, with Cumberbatch giving his usual fine performance. We just wish the movie was more balanced.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream Brexit on HBO Go or HBO Now