User reviews

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.

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.

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.

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.

It's a story of a young biracial boy and his mother during the German Blitz of London over several days in late 1940. Rita (Saoirse Ronan) is a working-class single mom working in a munitions factory who lives with her musician father, Gerald (Paul Weller), and nine-year-old son, George (Elliott Heffernan). After the Blitz begins, Rita sends George together with a group of children on a train to the safer countryside. George is resistant, partly because of the racism he has faced in the past. He escapes from the train about an hour out of London and tries to return to his home.

The film follows George's spectacular adventures, both positive and negative, over the next several days and Rita's desperation when she learns that George is missing. A flashback to around 1930 briefly introduces George's father, Marcus (CJ Beckford).

"Blitz" features some great acting by Ronan and Heffernan. However, the script and the cinematography are overwrought and unbelievable. Computer-generated imagery makes it seem like half of London is aflame in three days. The script contains many partial stories with inadequate context and resolution. Style is featured more than content, which is a rotten shame, given the quality of the acting.

This was not Steve McQueen's Finest Hour, or two, for that matter. The problem with these Brits at War type films is that they are either blatant propaganda or sloppy sentimentalism. Blitz is not the former but certainly falls at times into the second category.

I'm a big fan of the director, yet with his latest offering he sometimes loses his way with what exactly he's trying to tell us. Is he stating that racism existed in England during World War Two? Well the answer is yes, of course it did. Is he trying to tell us there was a class system during the war? Well again, of course there was. So, accepting those two facts, what about the movie? His narrative is basic, struggling for a story and for what it is, weak and wayward. Saoirse Ronan stars as Rita, the mother of 9 year old George - an excellent Elliot Heffernan. They live with her Dad, Gerald (Paul Weller) in the East End of London just as the Blitz begins in 1940.

There isn't a great chance of Spoilers here because there isn't much of a narrative. George is the victim of racism, as are some of the cast including a couple of fine performances from Benjamin Clementine and Leigh Gill. Rita also suffers abuse as a white woman with a mixed race child. There are some good scenes of the bombardment and its aftermath in the movie and in its way, is a tribute to the firefighters, police and rescue services of the time. However, McQueen reminds us, timely, that even our First Responders can project racism and prejudice.

McQueen, to his credit doesn't turn the film into a quasi documentary, does over sentimentalise at times. There is a rather pointless, bordering on the silly scene with a bunch of thieves and looters headed up by usual suspect's, the superb Stephen Graham and Kathy Burke, but to be honest, it should have been left on the cutting room floor.

Ronan won't be adding to her award tally here, but she does a fine job, if possibly miscast. Paul Weller the former Jam and Style Council frontman is a breath of fresh air and I wish we had seen more of him than just knocking out a song on an old piano.

With the Nazi bombs raining down around them, single mum "Rita" (Saoirse Ronan) has to take the difficult decision to evacuate her son "George" (Elliott Heffernan) from the London home they share with her father (Paul Weller). He isn't keen and so jumps from the moving train and tries to make it back home through a city populated by some kindly people and some Dickensian-style villains - and he encounters them both. Meantime, his mum is told of his absconding and as she tries to hold down he job in a munitions factory she must try to track him down. I thought Heffernan delivered really quite engagingly here, as did the rather menacing Kathy Burke with her brief appearances, but the film has a curious sterility to it. We know it's set amidst the random brutality of war, and the narration points out to us that that didn't all come from the skies above with racial prejudice never far from the surface, but it never looks or feels real. Clearly, Apple threw some money at it but the characters are all just too undercooked and there's an inevitability to the story that seems more about convenience than authenticity as it neuters the visceral humanity of the story. That last element isn't helped by a Ronan who seems very much to be going through the motions turning in an adequate enough performance but not one that wasn't being turned in on studio-based television dramas thirty years ago. Dickinson barely features and though it's all perfectly watchable, it's not really very memorable save for a young actor who gives us a knee-high view of man's venality and inhumanity.

Damned by the curse of modern filmmaking.

I am not the only one who knows that McQueen has substituted modern day London, with its diverse population, with wartime London which was 99.9% white at the time.

There are many other problems with this production. The boy lead cannot act. The political messaging is constant and clumsy. Nearly Every scene shows a white person who is cruel, bigoted and incompetent. Whilst every poc is portrayed as kind, competent and considerate.

The film does make an attempt to capture the wartime atmosphere and the odd scene is informative, but it difficult to care about any of the characters with such a clunky script.

The film is also padded with song and dance numbers.

Not McQueen's finest.

The first few minutes of 'Blitz' are overwhelming. Right from the start, Steve McQueen throws you into the deep end. The first scene shows houses going up in flames, firefighters trying to do what they can, one of them getting hurt, others fighting against a wall of fire and noise. The camera is right in the middle of the chaos, capturing it in raw and sometimes unfocused images, and you can almost feel the heat of the flames.

This is the 'Blitz', the bombing of London during World War II. McQueen shows the war horror from the viewpoint of Rita, a single mother living with her son George and her father in a working class neighbourhood. For his own safety, she sends her young son to the countryside, but he doesn't want to go and refuses to say goodbye in the raillway station. George jumps from the slow moving train, finds his way back to London, but on his way home all sorts of obstacles delay the happy reunion with his mother.

McQueen changes regularly between George's adventures and Rita's desperate search efforts. In both simultaneous stories, the blitz is shown in all its horrors. The bombed streets, the constant fear, the shelters in the underground stations, the women working in the ammunition factories, the live BBC broadcasts to keep the spirits high. McQueen adds an extra layer by showing the racism in the British society, which at that time was convinced of its own superiority.

There is a lot to enjoy from a cinematographic perspective. Beautiful tracking shots, original camera angles and some impressive aerial images of a burning London. One very nice scene starts by showing abstract moving dots, slowly changing into moonlit waves, which are the backdrop for the German bombers flying over the North Sea.

This is clearly a film with a big budget, and it shows. It is also a film which has a lot to offer: a thrilling story, a spectacular war, lots of excitement, nostalgic songs, and a mother and child theme everyone can relate to. And also one suprising member of the cast: Paul Weller plays Rita's father.

Not everything is perfect. There are moments lacking subtlety, and now and then McQueen aims clearly for the tear ducts. But for showing how London suffered during the blitz, the film is definitely worth seeing.

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.

I saw this today at the British Film Festival at Royal Festival Hall. I had no idea what to expect as I was tagging along with a friend who'd bought tickets, but I am so glad I went. It is a moving and thought provoking storyline, and the child actor who plays the lead deserves a best actor award for this film, I hope he's recognised for this, despite his young age.. I think watching it in London where it was set makes it hit you all the more, particularly if you're a bit of a local history geek like me. The whole cast were brilliant and played their parts perfectly, it's a must see for young and old, showing the history of what our grandparents went through.

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.

Imagine a 13-year-old teenager asking their parent/s to take them to see a movie about fictitious commoners in London living through constant bombardment by the Luftwaffe in WWII, and we might start to understand what went wrong with Blitz and what it could have been. It's inconceivable why this is intended as PG-13.

At its core, Blitz is a sheep in wolf's clothing, dressed as a war drama when it is really about racial tensions and navigating life as a mixed-race child in the early half of the 20th century. Despite scenes of devastation, there is no blood, gore and charred corpses typical of such events. The most violent scene was Stephen Graham's character repeatedly hitting himself in the face. Personally, I felt catfished by the marketing of this movie.

I imagine Steve McQueen of 12 Years A Slave fame was hoping for another Academy Award success in Blitz, an atypical drama set in WWII with themes of race, identity and nationhood. Unfortunately, the elements are not fully realised and we are left with a hodgepodge of a story that is neither here nor there. The best characters, Tommy and Ife, are underutilised and removed too quickly, and the focus on George becomes tedious and boring.

What you can expect from Blitz is not a tense and suspenseful war drama filled with scenes of destruction and human carnage, but rather a tepid tale of a mixed-race boy trying to make his way home to his mother, who evacuated him for his safety, in a London brimming with racial hostility. It was a lot of dressing and stuffing, but not much meat. Contrary to McQueen's lofty aspirations for the film, Blitz is more akin to a made-for-TV matinee and making a dull war movie should be a crime against humanity.

I cannot find one single flaw with this movie regarding the way it looks, from the costumes, styles, the recreations, the colors, even the effects, it all looks stunningly beautiful and believable to me.

Where I had trouble though was with the story and the length. I had a hard time becoming engaged and I kept checking the progress bar, which is pretty sad because by all accounts I should be loving this kind of movie. Only after George is separated from his mother it kind of lost me. The best moments were when he was with his mother and briefly with Ife, later on. And the brothers on the train, but that ends badly. All in all George is one lucky fella but he sure goes through a lot and somehow miraculously survives. Not everybody does and this movie shows that quite vividly and painfully. That is the other positive about it, it shows the horrors of the blitz and the struggles of regular folk to survive each night, while policemen were trying to turn them away at the entry to the subway.

I was mad at the very cheap trope of the gang of thieves, it's such a Victorian cliche. I mean if I wanna see a Dickens adaptation I will watch a Dickens adaptation.

Saoirse is beautiful in it, but I only found out Harris Dickinson is in it from the credits at the end.

This movie, written and directed by Steve McQueen, is about the German bombing on London during World War II and how this impacted the locals at that time. Saoirse Ronan plays Rita, the mother of George played by Elliott Heffernan whom she had to evacuate due to the Blitz. This movie was Elliott's professional onscreen debut!

Cinematography and visual effects are great however found some scenes as quite sub-standard. I also found the acting in general as poor. Saoirse Ronan's performance was ok however she did not have much to do as the movie is mainly concentrated on George and his attempt to return to his mother. In my opinion this movie had much more potential however it was not utilised. I liked the close-ups during the movie like the ones on people's feet while walking in the streets.

London Film Festival last night for the premiere of Steve McQueen's new film, Blitz.

Simply outstanding. Young Elliott Heffernan delivering a monumentally assured and sincere performance, Sairse Ronan as great as ever, and an ensemble cast of much loved British actors Stephen Graham, Kathy Burke, Benjamin Clementine and possibly my fave left-field piece of casting in recent history with Paul Weller as piano playing, loving grandad.

A Hans Zimmer score too, with his absolute mastery of letting you know something is about to happen, but you're never quite sure what. The film can feel big and epic at times and yet entirely localised and intimate at others as you go from swathes of London on fire to intimate London street scenes, front rooms and many small shops and businesses. You don't see or hear the enemy, just the bombs and the air raid sirens warning of them.

Full of fear and hope, singing in the underground to keep spirits up, sisterhood in the bomb factory, selfless characters looking out for those they don't know (take tissues). The diversity in the film reflects what London was like in 1940, and you've never seen it like that on film before. An ever timely reminder that those that divide society destroy society.

Best seen on a big screen with big sound. I hope it gets what it deserves come awards season, achievement in directing #2 for SMQ a definite possibility.

I can't wait to see it again.

It's an odd one. Visually at times, this is really interesting, and some of the more abstract playful effects are beautiful. There's barely a story, and Paul Weller looks really old, which in turn makes me feel old. At times, the whole thing reminded me of Titanic, another disaster movie, lots of water and closed fences. I'm admirer of Small Axe and Hunger by McQueen, this doesn't have the punch of either. It feels like a family film with some adult race issues squeezed in, the sort of thing you might watch on Christmas Day after The Kings Speech (the real Kings Speech). I don't know, like my title suggests a real miss mash of a movie, that left me with a miss mash of emotions. It's worth seeing I think, but I was lucky enough to see it for free, I don't think I'd join Apple TV to watch it.

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.

The story follows the epic journey of a nine year old boy who, like many children, is transported to the countryside for safety during the war. An hour outside London he jumps off the train to get back to his mother but along the way meets a variety of good and bad characters.

The story takes place during the first week of the Blitz. We know this because a scene depicts locals being denied entry into the tube for shelter - something that was corrected after the first week of constant air raids.

There is a sub-plot about racism that, at times, gets a bit in the way of the main story's period believability - a scene about hanging a blanket in a bomb shelter turns into an unlikely incident for the era. However, there is an overall authentic quality to the film that is mesmerizing. The streets are correctly dressed for 1940 - kerbs painted with white stripes, women wearing low-heeled shoes, St. Pauls is sooty... the look is spot on.

The clothing is excellent throughout but for one cat fur coat being worn by the main character that definitely looks postwar. There is also a dance sequence presumably set in an early 1930s flashback, before the boy was born, with a style of dancing that only developed in the U. S. during the mid-late 1930s.

The scenes depict well known events that happened during the 9 months of the Blitz, including the most horrific events: the Cafe de Paris bomb, and the Balham station flooding. However, the most heart-breaking scenes depict the nightly destruction and daily 'Carry On' struggles most Londoners dealt with.