Blitz (2024, dir. Steve McQueen)

by Jack Martin | Nov 14, 2024

Certificate: 12A

Running Time: 120 mins

UK Distributor: Apple TV+

UK Release Date: 1 November 2024 (theatrical) / 22 November 2024 (streaming)

WHO’S IN BLITZ?

Elliott Heffernan, Saoirse Ronan, Harris Dickinson, Benjamin Clementine, Kathy Burke, Paul Weller, Stephen Graham, Erin Kellyman, Leigh Gill, Mica Ricketts, CJ Beckford, Alex Jennings, Joshua McGuire, Hayley Squires, Sally Messham

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Steve McQueen (director, writer, producer), Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Arnon Milchan, Yariv Michan, Anita Overland, Michael Schaefer and Adam Somner (producers), Hans Zimmer (composer), Yorick Le Saux (cinematographer), Peter Sciberras (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

In war-torn London, a young boy (Heffernan) makes his way home to his mother (Ronan)…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON BLITZ?

[This is a slightly re-edited version of our review for Blitz from its showing at the BFI London Film Festival]

The films of the recently-knighted Sir Steve McQueen are deeply provocative works, diving into uncomfortable themes such as slavery and sex addiction with unflinching imagery that you’re unable to look away from, even as some horrific stuff is happening in front of you. This makes it all the more surprising that his latest feature Blitz is by far his safest to date, containing precious little of the filmmaker’s usual provocation in favour of more pleasing drama that certain award voting bodies will pleasantly lap up.

That isn’t to say that Blitz is bad, because it’s not. It is a perfectly fine film that is easy enough to like, and one that audiences will have very little difficulty absorbing. But given that this is all from a filmmaker who’s spent his career up to this point challenging audiences with deeply thought-provoking dramas about some of the most unsavoury subjects in our history and society, it can’t help but feel like a slight letdown.

The film takes place in 1940, at the height of the Blitz that saw German planes drop bombs all across London. Our main character is a young boy named George (played by newcomer Elliott Heffernan), who is put on a train against his will by his loving mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan) to be evacuated to the countryside, where he and many other children will be safe from the bombings. But George, eager to remain in London, jumps off the train and makes a perilous journey home, encountering several people along the way – some friendly, some not so much – as well as witnessing the horrors that befell London during this destructive period of the war.

McQueen has clearly opted for a slightly lighter tone than usual with Blitz, and that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do when you’re a filmmaker at the height of their powers and are eager to make something more audience-friendly. However, his intent of creating a Railway Children-style family adventure is mixed somewhat oddly with more mature themes that are more in line with his previous films, including some commentary on the homegrown prejudices that British soldiers are currently fighting against, and Dickensian working-class strife amongst the women working in the factories or the thieves taking advantage of the destruction. This renders it more than a little unfocused, as McQueen attempts to give each strand enough time for it to leave an impression, only to struggle in weaving it all together into a satisfactory whole, as though they all came from earlier script drafts that had them as the main focus. After a point, you’re not entirely sure if even McQueen knows what he’s ultimately trying to say, as it can get rather messy when he’s juggling so much all at once.

The film also has perhaps too many characters within its ensemble that draws even more focus away from the central strand structure around young George, but even he tends to suffer from an unusual case of underwriting. The performance of young actor Elliott Heffernan is certainly impressive, and there are strong turns by the ever-reliable Saoirse Ronan and Harris Dickinson, the latter as a soldier who aids Ronan’s Rita in the search for her son after she learns he’s gone AWOL, but you rarely get the opportunity to know much else about these characters other than what they’re going through in the moment. Some flashbacks fill us in on some vital details, such as the racist way in which George’s Black father is removed from the picture, but you’re never as emotionally invested as you should be because too little is revealed that makes them interesting for the viewer.

Sometimes, you’ll even get characters who are almost too unrealistic to exist within this kind of film. Specifically, Stephen Graham and Kathy Burke show up as gang members who force George to steal jewellery from destroyed shops and then later from the corpses of those that have perished in the bombings, and they are so grotesquely immoral that to say they’ve come straight out of a stereotypical Charles Dickens novel would be to imply more dimensions than they actually have. To a point, you can see the angle that McQueen is coming from with these type of characters, but like most others in this film they are written all too thinly to be defined by anything other than their one core personality trait, which in Graham and Burke’s case is to be as impossibly cartoonish as possible without adding any extra depth.

As all over the place as Blitz can often be, it certainly doesn’t suffer from some rather fantastic production values. The sets and costumes are very well crafted, while Hans Zimmer’s score grows more intense with each nail-biting moment. McQueen even finds time to indulge his inner provocateur, albeit on a lesser scale than before, with the opening scene in and of itself being quite brutal as blazing buildings dominate the deafening soundtrack and something as useful as a firehose can become a seriously harmful weapon if allowed to get out of control. It is a handsome production, filled with striking imagery and moving performances where you do feel the emotional toll being taken on its otherwise thinly-defined characters.

This is definitely the kind of film that almost feels too perfectly designed to please Academy voters, and there’s nothing exactly wrong with that so long as your intentions are ultimately noble. However, Blitz feels overly safe for its subject matter, and especially a filmmaker like Steve McQueen whose past work indicates that he’s anything but safe.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Blitz is a well-intentioned and well-made historical drama that features some strong performances from its ensemble cast, but the thin writing and unfocused narrative render it a much safer effort than usual from filmmaker Steve McQueen.