Blitz

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.

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.

Having enjoyed many of his works, McQueen continues to demonstrate his directing and talents as his approach with this WWII drama offers some interesting atmospheres and beautiful presented atmospheres. Many of the costumes, sound designs, dialogue and soundtrack is very good and fits the era of its setting. Regarding the performances, all of the performances are really good, particularly Elliott Heffernan and Saoirse Ronan as Heffernan and Ronan gave a fantastic performance.

Narratives about WWII have been overdone in the past and while McQueen provides a new approach and observation of the time period, I found myself feeling a bit underwhelmed with the story as unlike McQueen's usual style and approach, it felt more tamed and really predictable that ends up being a bit of a bore at times. Because of this, it caused the character engagement to feel lacking nor fully engaging to connect with. It almost doesn't feel like a Steve McQueen movie at times.

While some pacing moments could improve as well, as a whole, it's still interesting at times and I always look forward to seeing what McQueen could bring to the table.

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.

It was really hard not to be frustrated watching Blitz but unlike a lot of movies that leave me underwhelmed all of the pieces where in place to create something truly great. Even if it's not a bad movie overall my frustration was only compounded by the fact that it never really felt like a Steve McQueen movie for all the wrong reasons. He usually tackles his subject matters with so much nuance and depth but Blitz just gives the sense that he bit off more than he could chew and created something that felt very shallow when all was said and done.

It's hard to call Blitz a complete waste of potential with the amount of truly impressive technical prowess on display. This movie is gorgeously directed and every cent of the budget feels like it was put on screen. I think it's a real shame most people won't get to see this in a cinema because the technical aspects really merit it being seen in that environment. The cinematography is beautiful in how it makes use of all the films distinctive different environments and it ended up feeling like one of the best looking movies I've seen this year. The use of sound in the bombing scenes is effective in just how terrifying they are and it reminded me of great war movies like Dunkirk and 1917 in the best ways possible.

There is so much acting talent in this movie, as there is with every Steve McQueen film, and while a lot of the actors ended up feeling squandered the ones at the centre manage to bring the film most of it's emotional weight. Seeing Elliot Heffernan in this movie can't help but astound me at his acting talent for such a young age. Basically the entire film rests upon his shoulders and he fulfilled that mandate perfectly. He's relentlessly endearing and likeable and for as weak as I found a lot of the writing to be he still managed to consistently tug at my heartstrings. Saoirse Ronan has proven to be quite the chameleon in all her roles and I thought she was great here as well. I thought her accent was on point and the few scenes she actually shares with Heffernan ensured that I fully bought into their connection. I no nothing about Paul Weller as a musician but if I hadn't already known this was his acting debut beforehand I would've been astounded to find that out after seeing the actual film. His performance is so loving and wholesome that I couldn't wait to see more of him on screen that he ended up becoming my favourite character in the whole movie.

The rest of the cast ultimately are let down but the films main weakness however and that is unfortunately the script. There are so many players crammed into the journey that the George character goes on and with their limited screen time they just ended feeling like caricatures. Harris Dickinson is great as a character that I found to be really likeable but not much more. I kept waiting for the moment where he was going to come into his own but it just never came and despite enjoying a lot of his scenes I don't really know what purpose he served. Stephen Graham is one of the most underrated actors on earth but his character did nothing for me. He just comes across as a generic villain who at times felt cartoonishly evil and I honestly felt like his entire part could've been removed from the film and it wouldn't have changed anything. Benjamin Clementine really did end up feeling like one of the best parts of the entire film in which his limited screen time actually allowed him to have a lot more impact. However, there's a scene in here with him that really rubbed me the wrong way in how it felt like such a simplistic take on race and segregation. It's well delivered by Clementine but it just felt a bit unbecoming of a good character and a great performance but also for McQueen as a filmmaker.

I didn't really find McQueen's depiction of this time period to be that successful because it really feels like it's lacking into two key areas; focus and depth. The film ends up feeling surprisingly messy despite tethering itself to the individual journeys on 2 characters. There's a non-linear aspect to the story that felt really awkwardly inserted and it just kept feeling like it was halting the momentum. I think a less-is-more approach would've really benefited the script because like McQueen's last film Widows I think Blitz tries to tackle too much. It feels like the script wants to tell an epic story about London as a whole during this time but trying to deliver all of that through the eyes of one child made a lot of the different characters and locations feel strangely positioned. There's a nightclub scene that has one of the films most effective moments in it but after it was done I questioned its inclusion to begin with as no character we know up to that point appears in that scene. Rather than feeling intimate the film ends up feeling really sprawling and the ways in which McQueen put this story together felt really clunky to me.

Because of the clunkiness I don't really feel as if the film ends up having much to say and it feels like a snapshot of a particular period of period history but without much real examination into it. The depiction of racism felt very hollow to me which is a surprise given how well it's been explored in McQueen's other works. The speech given by the Benjamin Clementine character felt like an over simplification of a complex issue and while the scenes in which racism is depiction are extremely effective it's not really explored in any kind of successful way. I also really did not care for the way the film concluded and it left me with a bitter taste of the film as a whole. There's an outstanding scene in which a tube station is being flooded that was truly terrifying but it ends so abruptly without any real conclusion that it actually kind off baffled me. The film starts with an evacuation and ends in a way that seems to imply that was the wrong choice but everything about the narrative conveys how dangerous this period was to live in so I was confused by what McQueen was trying to say with the final scene. It ended on a note that felt far too optimistic and like the rest of the film before it I didn't think there was much depth to be found.

Blitz isn't one of 2024's worst movies by any stretch but it's certainly one of its most underwhelming for me. I think it's beautifully acted and gorgeously shot but there's just not much going on under the surface. Most of the topics it tries to tackle end up feeling hollow to me and the whole thing came across as simplistic in all the wrong ways. I don't really mind the fact that this doesn't really feel like any other Steve McQueen film but what I do mind is that it feels almost devoid of the things that make his films great in the first place.