Blitz

Visually striking (costumes, sets, not too much CGI...) and with a great cast who do a wonderful job with the parts they play. I loved the shots of the women working in the factory!

What I'm struggling with is that it feels like it's not sure if it's about a boy trying to find his way home and encounters lots of obstacles along the way... or the impact of racism in London in the 1930s/1940s. I think both would have been excellent and interesting movies but what we end up with is something that feels both too much and too little.

I personally would have loved it if it focused entirely on George and, in trying to find his way home, he learns to more about himself and his heritage. We get some of that, but they're more like side quests that are cut short. I would have liked more Ife! What a sweetheart.

He experiences so much trauma, much of which takes the viewer by surprise, but we don't really see how that shapes him.

There are bunch of points that are clearly supposed to be tear jerkers but they just don't quite land for me.

The score was also pretty wild. Like an experimental horror film. War = horror?

I suppose one could argue that there's no satisfying end in war times.

Saoirse Ronan is obviously very good in her role. However she isn't really given all that much to do. The film doesn't really utilize the potential of the premise to its full extent. I found the focus on the kid character to be a little annoying. The movie also has pretty bad pacing and I was checking the time throughout. It is well directed and has good cinematography. The visual effects are also pretty solid. The sound design kind of gave me whiplash with just how often it would go from really loud to really quiet. It's not really a bad movie but it is just so basic and predictable which makes it disappointing.

During the blitz, Rita (Saoirse Ronan) has been reluctantly persuaded to let her young son George (Elliott Heffernan) evacuate to the country. He is not keen and jumps from the train and starts making his way back to his mum, encountering various characters, some kind, some not, but he is always in danger of harm and / or being sent back to the country. Rita, distraught at losing him, finds out what happened and starts looking for him.

Certainly this is a sweeping and spectacular visualisation of what happened to London during the blitz and how it affected the population. In fact the broader picture of how ordinary people were affected on a day to day basis, how it changes their lives and what they had to do is the principal achievement here. Less so, despite fine performances from Ronan and newcomer Hefferman is the 'adventure' the young George goes through which comes across as a not always convincing sub Dickens story, with looters Stephen Graham and Kathy Burke straight out of Oliver Twist. McQueen is a skilled filmmaker, but this time lays particular elements on with a trowel, including the inevitable racism, which he works on too much at the expense of the story. The overall result here is a spectacular, often stunning epic which left me rather cold. Disappointing.

Apple really wants to give money to Oscar winning directors to bolster its own credentials. The problem is that Steve McQueen isn't nearly as good as everyone insists he is. His output is wildly inconsistent. This one falls somewhere in the middle.

It looks pretty decent - of course most shots are very tight to disguise the difficulty of dressing the city to look old without millions of pounds. The CG is fairly good when they do go wider.

The story is paper thin and at two hours it really drags in the middle, you could cut 20 minutes and it would be a lot better. Of course he shoehorns in a lot of stuff about racism as he tends to, like Spike Lee he can't leave it alone even when it's not really the point of the story. It doesn't detract from the film but it doesn't add much either.

Ultimately though it feels like this is a film he made because Apple wanted to give him the money, it doesn't really have anything to say and certainly nothing new.

The Blitz and its societal impact absolutely warrant a high budget film. And at times this film delivers. There are great action shots of night raids and bombings. Some scenes get across the tension and fear of the time really well and one tragedy (based on true events) is done extremely well.

The problem is only half the film is actually about the Blitz. The other half of the time is spent blatantly and unnaturally shoehorning issues of race and racism. It actually gets so ridiculous that it completely destroys any immersion.

If your only exposure to the Blitz was this film you would go away thinking that ethnic tensions were just as significant an issue in London in 1940 as the bombs raining down from the sky.

The director clearly wanted to make a film about racism which is absolutely fine and he has already done so expertly in the amazing 12 Years A Slave. But he should not have commandeered the Blitz as a subject for this purpose. It is silly at best and disrespectful at worst and makes for a thoroughly confused and directionless film.

On top of that the storyline itself is pretty repetitive with many aspects and characters not fully fleshed out. There is basically zero character growth which would be fine if the main purpose of the film was showcasing a snapshot of Blitz London, but as I've said it doesn't even do that justice.

I hope this film existing doesn't dissuade someone else for giving a Blitz film a go - WW2 is highly covered in media but this film does little more to shine a light on the as yet underserved topic of the Blitz.