by Heath Lynch, Contributing Writer
Look, Saoirse’s great, but I’ve already filled my annual quota for excellent Saoirse performances in a bland movie this year with The Outrun. Must we go through this? We must? Ahh, fine, let’s get it over with…
Taking place in the early ‘40s during the London bombings of the Nazi Blitzkrieg, the aptly named Blitz follows a young boy named George (Elliott Heffernan) and his mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan). When Rita decides to evacuate George from the city to the countryside for his own safety, George feels betrayed and runs away. But very quickly, the fear of being alone, and the realization that his mother only wants what’s best for him, has George going on a Dickensian journey across England to reunite with her, all while dealing with potential friends, new enemies, and the prejudices of the world that stand in his way.
It’s not that Blitz is a bad movie, per se. It’s just a generic, and even kinda soulless, World War II film that offers nothing new or interesting to sink your teeth into. It’s a movie you’ve already seen before, done better elsewhere. It’s a film that you’ll be disappointed to learn was directed by Steve McQueen (because you’d certainly never guess this was his work), due to it feeling like it’s quite beneath him. And above all, it’s a flick that commits one of the greatest cardinal sins that a movie could ever make — being boring.
The parallels to something like Oliver Twist, or even The Odyssey, become instantly apparent just a few minutes into George’s journey. While it might be engaging in its own right, this conceit feels quite at odds with the emotional tone this movie is going for. Simply put, it’s hard to be adventurous and fun when the world is at war, cities are being bombed, and people are dying. You could argue, and I’d even agree, that this movie is not meant to be fun. However, it is meant to be adventurous, and the most natural extension of adventure is uplifting, fun action. No one comes out of Raiders of the Lost Ark feeling dour. And this central tonal conflict is the crux of why Blitz doesn’t work. We see George hopping trains and making friends, but then we visit Rita as she’s making bombs in a factory. George feels safe and secure as he’s getting life lessons from a soldier who finds him out on his own, but then runs into a teenager who turns him into a group of local scavengers looking to control his life. We see five minutes straight of a grand party with drinks, song, and dance, but then we smash cut to seeing everyone at the party cold and dead as their lifeless bodies sit in chairs, or slink to the floor, with their lungs blown out.
Does that come across as jarring? Or uncomfortable? You’re damn right it does.
Now, that’s kinda the point of the movie. To show the complete scope of the consequences of war. How disastrous it is for everyone, even at home, and not just for the soldiers on the battlefields. But this bleakness stands in sharp contrast to the inherent structure of the story that clearly wants to be a more whimsical tale.
If the inconsistent tone wasn’t enough of a problem, the unbelievability of the narrative doesn’t make anything any better. Take that party scene again, for example. George is under the reluctant employ of a group of scavengers who slither around London, picking jewels, money, and valuables off the dead. He and these scavengers are operating outside of the law, clearly. We even see George almost get arrested at one point, when he’s looting a jewelry store when a couple soldiers nearly catch him. So when they go to raid the corpses at this grand party, they’re cautious. Quiet. Until George accidentally trips and falls to the floor, causing a loud bang to ring through the ballroom hall.
Everyone falls silent. George becomes lifeless, stiff as a plank of wood. Unmoving. The other vagrants with him, those controlling him, freeze in a panic. The camera pans upwards and we see a balcony filled with troops. Over a dozen soldiers who stand as a threat to all of them.
But don’t worry.
Not but 10 seconds after fear for their lives, and almost being caught grave-robbing, the rummagers start pretending they were at the party. Talking, no, yelling, loudly. Pouring and drinking champagne. Playing with the dismembered arms of the dead. No, I’m not kidding. They’re as loud and boisterous as their characters are annoying. Without a care in the world for being caught or disturbing any of the soldiers upstairs… that they were just frozen in fear over moments ago. In fact, one of the soldiers even comes down the stairs and proceeds to walk right past these ruffians scrounging for trinkets. So what was the point of anything? Why was George and everyone so scared? If there are no consequences to anything, what’re the stakes? And if you’re immediately contradicting the film’s own reality that we just saw exists, how can I be immersed in the film?
Yeah, that was a bit of a diatribe, but a necessary one. Required to illustrate how lost this film is, and how narratively unbelievably of these stakes. Because, while I only broke down one scene, this is indicative of the entire film. Scene after scene. Something happens that tonally contradicts what just took place. And, at the same time, each scene seemingly breaks your suspension of disbelief regarding what’s happening in the narrative.
But these issues pale in comparison to the grander concern that this is just… boring. Seeing the destruction of war, and its impacts on regular citizens, isn’t something remotely new. Especially regarding WWII. If a film wants to tackle this topic, it needs to either offer something new, or execute on its premise exceptionally well. Blitz does neither of these things. It slowly meanders through the common stereotypes and conventions that you would expect a WWII film to make you suffer through, with an uninspired, Oscar-bait sheen hanging it. You would be forgiven for being distracted while watching this, or maybe even passing out for a quick nap, as there’s hardly anything here to really hold your attention.
Now, I did say up top that this is not a bad movie, and I meant that. There is a bright spot. A really bright spot, at that. And that’s none other than Ronan, and to a lesser extent Heffernan. Really, there’s nothing wrong with any of the performances. Even the background characters and supporting players do a good job. But it’s these two at the center that really anchor the experience. Heffernan’s frustration, angst, regret, and remorse feel sincere and earned. Though the character of George often feels captive to the film’s plot, a narrative plot point more than a fleshed out character, Heffernan does a really good job throughout this flick.
Ronan is the showstopper, however. I wouldn’t be shocked if this performance, or her work in The Outrun from earlier this year, nabs her another Oscar nomination. Her first since her turn in Little Women back in 2019, this would make for her fifth Oscar nomination in total. Even if she doesn’t win, this would certainly solidify her as one of the greatest acting talents of her generation. Debatably of all time.
There’s a confidence in Ronan’s work here that’s so captivating. Even when she is showcasing vulnerability and distress at very emotionally gut-wrenching moments in her life, like the loss of her husband, or the separation from her child, she’s still powerful and self-assured. When she’s standing up to her boss, or protesting for the Underground to be opened up as a bomb shelter, Ronan is resolute and vigilant. Painting her brush across the emotional spectrum, and making a masterpiece out of what is, in script, a rather minor and satisfying role, Ronan commands the screen. Hell, she’s even singing here, and she’s crushing it! There’s nothing she can’t do, and the range of her talents are on full display in Blitz.
There is one other aspect here that might work for you, but it also might not. But hey, at least it’s here, and that’s an examination of racism and bigotry in the United Kingdom. This, by the way, is the only element of this film that actually feels like it has McQueen’s fingerprints on it, as he has quite often explored racism, bigotry, and race relations in his films. We see racism and xenophobia come from all angles, and how times of strife, such as wartime, only serve to exacerbate existing issues of systemic racism. And while this is a welcome inclusion to this film to at least offer some amount of thematic depth and nuance to the experience, it’s also simultaneously frustrating. This is because it’s all fairly surface-level commentary. We just see people being racist, and we’re told it’s bad. That’s why this aspect might not work for you, because you’ll want more out of it, and it never comes. It gets even more frustrating when Benjamin Clémentine gives a speech that, while well intended, and certainly strikingly true, feels like it’s included to “solve racism.” After this speech, the movie doesn’t seem concerned with wrestling with these deeper topics that it brought it, instead merely content to pat them on the head and acknowledge their existence.
It’s the kind of surface-level deconstruction I would expect from someone else. Not from the likes of McQueen. Again, this feels beneath him. We’ve seen so much of his work by now to know that he’s stronger than this, and is one of the leading voices in Hollywood when it comes to having these kinds of conversations. So this feels quite disappointing with that in mind.
Maybe this just wasn’t for me. I don’t know. That’s possible. It didn’t help that I was laughing at the movie within three minutes, when a firefighter gets smacked in the face and knocked out by a water hose, like a slapstick joke out of a Buster Keaton movie. Especially because it never seemed to recover from there. Because this is tonally and thematically all over the place, poorly paced, and narratively unbelievable at nearly every turn. Blitz just doesn’t really work outside of Ronan.
Rating: Didn’t Like It
Blitz is currently streaming on Apple TV+
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