I didn’t realize that Benedict Cumberbatch’s Brexit movie was also an HBO production. I thought it was just some crappy, low-budget British-television production which was thrown together at the last minute. My original qualm about this movie, Brexit, was about Benedict’s sad baby-bird vibe when he shaved his hairline to look mostly bald. My second qualm was that the script sounded awful, and like they were focusing on the wrong part of the Brexit story, which is still unfolding. Much like all of us American peeps don’t completely understand the extent of the Russian interference in the 2016 election, British peeps don’t completely understand the patchwork of shenanigans (some of it illegal) that created the Brexit vote in 2016. But that didn’t stop HBO from making this movie with Benedict as the “mastermind” behind the Brexit campaign, Dominic Cummings. The trailer was just released:

First of all, this just looks like a sh-tty movie, and bless his heart, Benedict is not a natural at accent work. Second of all, imagine if HBO was releasing a film right NOW, in the middle of the Mueller investigation, in which Paul Manafort is being played by, like, Tom Hanks, and Hanks is making Manafort into some kind of brilliant, Sherlockian antihero. It would be called what it is: propaganda, or entertainment malpractice, if you will. As many have pointed out, Britain doesn’t even have an all-encompassing investigation into what went down during the Brexit/Leave campaign – there is no British equivalent of the Mueller investigation. There have been smaller investigations, like the one done by the UK Electoral Commission, which found that the “Vote Leave” campaign broke the law. And the British investigations into the data-mining and manipulations by Cambridge Analytica have not gotten very far.

British journalist Carole Cadwalladr did an excellent Twitter thread about why “Brexit starring Benedict Cumberbatch” is a terrible thing, although she deleted some of the brilliant points she made, these points hold up:

You’re heroicising a man in contempt of parliament. We don’t know the facts still. Because he refuses to tell parliament. But this character with the ‘software’ is bullshit. The ‘physicists’ are still unknown. The work was not declared. Electoral commission refused to investigate

— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) December 15, 2018

I’ve deleted my tweets. I meant no criticism of James Graham. I’m just hugely frustrated by ongoing cover-up by govt & opposition. Fiction difficult in absence of basic facts. But seems film funded by Trump donor & Putin chum is closest we will get to a public inquiry, so enjoy https://t.co/tOLdqxntG2

— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) December 15, 2018

This also made me think about Vice, the movie about Dick Cheney’s life, which is picking up a ton of big nominations this awards season. I have concerns that the film will legitimize Cheney or make people like him because people like Christian Bale. But the timing is very different – Cheney has been out of public office for ten years. The discussion about his questionable legacy of “public service” is fair game, and we have a better handle on all the sh-t he did in office. Not enough time has passed since the Brexit vote, and the controversy is still very much ONGOING.

Photos courtesy of WENN.