Brexit (2019) * * *

Directed by:  Toby Haynes

Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Rory Kinnear, John Heffernan, Richard Goulding, Simon Paisley Day, Lucy Russell, Paul Ryan

Watching Brexit is like tearing a scab off of a wound.   The wound is now exposed before it is fully healed, and process has to start again from square one.    It doesn't matter if you aren't British when you see Brexit.    The 2016 campaign for the UK to leave the European Union eerily mirrors the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, with many of the same themes at play.    Fear, check.   Immigration is going to be the death of us, check.   Unsubstantiated accusations, check.    Social media databases plumbed and targeted, check.   A nation's voters ultimately voting against their best interests, check. A battle which got ugly and sometimes violent?   Definitely. 

How did Brexit come to pass?    The movie Brexit tells us how.   It is troublesome to understand that even though we have access to more information than ever before, people seem less informed than ever before.    The Remain side, led by then-Prime Minister David Cameron's director of communications Craig Oliver (Kinnear), spread their message through substance and facts, while the Leave side, piloted by political strategist Dominic Cummings (Cumberbatch), weaponizes fear, xenophobia, unsubstantiated claims, and racism to plead its case.   

Brexit is not a good vs. evil story, however.   It explains in fast-paced detail how the Leave side controlled the game, with the Remain side seemingly on the defensive and catch-up at nearly every turn.   As Oliver puts it, "we keep putting out fires the Leave side starts,"   Does this sound familiar?   The Leave message ultimately prevailed by a slim margin, but it seems the UK has been dealing with buyer's remorse ever since.    Three years later, an exit strategy to leave the EU is still not in place.  
But, that is of little consequence to Cummings, who as Brexit opens is looking for a job and trying to distance himself from the Brexit campaign.  

Cumberbatch's performance reminds us of his stellar work in The Imitation Game (2014).  In both films, he rubs his superiors the wrong way with his coarse manner and arrogance, but he knows his stuff and his message of "Let's Take Back Control," resonates with enough UK voters to win the referendum.    It is ironic that Cummings seemingly distrusts and dislikes most people, but finds a way to understand their fears and disenfranchisement.    What are they disenfranchised about?    It doesn't matter.    Being so is enough to swing the vote, and a social media database company opens up access to millions of unregistered voters to the Leave side, many of which are open to exploitation.

But, where Brexit stumbles is how it seems to want to paint Cummings as having something of a conscience.    Does he have one?    The movie clumsily suggests so, but it feels more like the movie hedging its bets, as if we would not be able to tolerate a story with an amoral main character.    The movie's attempts to humanize Cummings is a weakness, but not a fatal one.    Brexit is at its best when it confronts the overall feeling which allowed such a referendum to pass even though it is against the best interest of voters.    If there is anything the Brexit and Trump campaigns have taught us, is that voters are sometimes swayed by emotion over logic and fact.    Trump somehow convinced enough voters that he is the champion of the working class, and the Leave campaign convinced UK voters that setting a course on a ship bound for nowhere was also a good idea.    How's that working out so far?