Blitz - Movie Review
Blitz - Movie Review
Critics Score - 6 of 10
General Audience Score - 7 of 10
SYNOPSIS - As the film opens, we hear a distant hum which slowly becomes a dull roar on a black screen. Some text alerts us to the fact that it’s September 1940, the Second World War has commenced and Germany has begun the bombing of London. Many people needed to stay, work in factories and keep the war machine running, but upwards of a million and a half evacuate the city, more than half of them children, many unaccompanied while the parents stayed behind. This period is dubbed the Blitz. A scene opens with a London street on fire, fireman rush up the road in between the buildings with water blasting from hoses in an attempt to douse the flames. Fire leaps from all the windows of buildings, bricks, lumber and debris line the streets, the remnants of bombs tearing buildings apart at the seams. An aerial view looking up as planes pass overhead shows us more bombs falling, the camera holds on one, we follow it’s descent for a few moments. A firefighter holds the end of a hose, preparing to start spraying but the extreme water pressure suddenly hits and the nozzle flys up, smacking him in the face knocking him out cold. His companions take him away while a few others try and tame the now uncontrolled hose shooting water everywhere, like a giant snake gone mad. Buildings collapse around them, air raid sirens ringing in the distance until finally the scene cuts cold and we hear silence.
Our screen fills with a close up shot of flowers, daisies from the looks of them, the image in black and white. Next we see an older gentleman, Gerald (Paul Weller), sitting down and playing the piano, a cat is perched on his lap. A tracking shot slowly turns away from him and we begin to move through the small two-story home, eventually going up the stairs where we see a bedroom door. In an instant, we’re taken inside the room and see young George (Elliott Heffernan), a boy of maybe ten or twelve, as he lies in bed sleeping. His mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan), lies behind him on the bed, a look of quiet despair on her face, her makeup has run and smeared, she’s evidently been crying. Although George has a white mother, he is clearly of mixed descent, we later learn that his African American father was deported.
In what appears to be a flashback, we watch as Rita plays with George, being silly and playful with the boy, she tells him, “Make a wish, think. Just one.” But after enjoying some time with him for a few moments, some air raid sirens begin sounding in the background and the next thing we know the two head outside with their coats on into the cold, dark streets of a London night. A crowd has gathered near a subway station entrance, but the gates are shut and the station guards are trying to keep the mass of about a hundred people out. We hear explosions nearby as the terrified crowd struggle and yell at the men to allow them access inside, so they can get underground. Finally a police officer threatens the guards and they reluctantly let the crowd in, Rita and George making their way down to relative safety.
A radio broadcast the next day gives us exposition that there will be another chance for families to send their children to safety and that the people of London won’t be intimidated. Rita and Gerald prepare George to leave, despite his pleas to allow him to stay, Rita puts him on a train and stays behind to continue to work in a machine shop creating bombs. As the story unfolds, George jumps from the train and tries to make his way back to his mother, the reuniting of the pair is the central focus of the plot. Needless to say, much stands in the way of George finding his way back, but McQueen will no doubt find a pathway home for young George. As we wind our way through the screenplay’s pages of text and their fabricated struggles, our investment in that story wanes, despite other parts of the film being highly engaging. The anti-climactic finale is about as pedestrian as it can get and ultimately leaves us wondering how such traditional storytelling could come from one of the genius minds currently putting images on the big screen.
I try and imagine how Blitz would be looked upon if it had come to us, say by a first time director or one that didn’t have any substantial films to their name. If that was the case, there is the reality that this film may be celebrated, maybe not to the extreme, but the competency of filmmaking on display here in the direction, production design, cinematography, score and most of its technical aspects is undeniable. Unfortunately we do not live in that reality. In our reality Steve McQueen, Saoirse Ronan, Harris Dickinson, Hans Zimmer and other names associated with this project meant the potential for this film to be, not just great, but possibly epic, was well within reach. This had Best Picture material written all over it. That is not the film we received. Mark my words, Blitz will struggle to even get a Best Picture nomination. While the direction from McQueen is competent enough, I lay much of the film’s issues with this hum-drum script that underutilized certain characters and felt way too contrived by about the midway point. Some of the subplots McQueen explores were interesting enough on their own, but eventually it became a game of “how many obstacles can we throw at our protagonist” before it becomes so repetitive that we just give up caring. This script’s character development combined with its predictability equaled an almost complete lack of momentum that sets in midway through the second act. Many of the set pieces are upper tier, the production design is excellent, providing for some truly striking imagery. The film is absolutely beautiful, the camera work capturing some compositions that are sure to attract the attention of Academy Awards members. Likewise the editing is terrific work, allowing the film to flow smoothly, even once the story loses its momentum. The score as well from Hans Zimmer is pulling its weight, working double time at trying to get us invested in the story and make us lean into the drama it’s selling. As I mentioned before, Ronan is good, she’s doing the best with what she’s got, but even her most powerful scene in the film feels quite random in its placement within the story, like an Oscar bait-y scene shoehorned in because it needed one. As I mentioned at the outset, Ronan’s performance isn’t even at the level of her work in this year’s The Outrun, a superior role and movie, in my opinion. Dickinson is criminally underutilized in the movie as well, having basically nothing to do but offer a few meager lines of throwaway dialogue. Again, all these defects do not mean the film is terrible, or even a subpar one, but certainly this film is not what one might have hoped for or expected coming from some of the most talented minds currently working in Hollywood.
SUMMARY - Do not get me wrong, this is a good movie. It showcased some interesting and fascinating aspects of WW2 that many people don’t stop to think about. But there was a thrilling, compelling and probably even great film here somewhere, McQueen just didn’t find it with this Blitz.
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