Blitz (12A)

In 1940, German bombs rain down on the English capital. Single mother Rita reluctantly evacuates her young son George to the countryside to keep him safe from the Nazi onslaught. The strong-headed tyke leaps off the train outside of London and proceeds to walk back home to be reunited with his mother. En route, the boy bears witness to the devastation of the conflict and he becomes unwittingly connected to a gang of street thieves led by the menacing Albert.

LondonNet Film Review

Blitz (12A) Film Review from LondonNet

A monochrome photograph in the archives of the Imperial War Museum of a small black boy in a sea of child evacuees on July 5 1940 inspires Oscar-winning writer-director Steve McQueen’s dramatisation of the wartime bombing of the English capital by Hitler’s Luftwaffe, glimpsed predominantly through the eyes of a nine-year-old boy from a mixed ethnic background. McQueen’s episodic script conflates real-life people and events from 1940 and 1941 such as the bombing of Balham tube station and a direct hit to the Cafe de Paris during a big band performance. Jewish activist Mickey Davis, who led a volunteer-run shelter for East End families displaced by the bombing, features heavily in one plot strand…

Sequences of munitions raining down on the city and a plane crashing into dockside buildings are breathlessly staged but ghosts of cinema past haunt Blitz and McQueen’s vision feels underwhelming by comparisons. John Boorman’s semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story Hope And Glory captured the same time period with deeper emotion, the flooding of a London Underground station was staged more thrillingly by director Joe Wright in Atonement, and the looting of the dead by a gang of grotesque ne’er-do-wells picks a pocket or two of Oliver Twist.

The constant source of light is 11-year-old newcomer Elliott Heffernan. Discovered during an open casting call, the first-time actor delivers an emotionally raw performance in the midst of directorial brio, which helps McQueen to scrub away the whitewash from British wartime history. Heffernan plays George, who is begrudgingly evacuated to the countryside from the home he shares with mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan) and grandfather Gerald (Paul Weller) in Stepney, east London. The tyke leaps off the moving train, a few miles outside of the station, and make his way back home. En route, George encounters a kind-hearted Nigerian air raid warden named Ife (Benjamin Clementine) and menacing gang leaders Albert (Stephen Graham) and Beryl (Kathy Burke).

Blitz is McQueen’s weakest fiction inspired by historical source material and is not on a par with Hunger, 12 Years A Slave or the Small Axe collection. The filmmaker’s verve and artistic flourishes are impressive such as reflecting a runaway horse backlit by flames in the pupils of George’s eyes or a graceful whirl around the Cafe de Paris before the bomb hits, captured as a single tracking shot. However, the gift inside this beautiful wrapping is insubstantial.

Heffernan dominates his scenes and catalyses lovely screen rapport with Ronan. Supporting performances add flecks of colour but are often throwaway. Hayley Squires’ cockney munitions factory rabble-rouser loses her voice while Harris Dickinson’s firefighter, who saves Ronan’s songbird from a collapsing brick wall, barely registers. McQueen’s picture consistently smoulders but doesn’t catch light.

– Sarah Lee