Blitz Review

Hey ho, let's go! To sleep!

Halfway through Steve McQueen's Blitz, our main character, George, is slowly kicking a rock on a London sidewalk for what feels like an eternity, and I thought to myself, "Yeah, kid, I am so bored as well." I would have had more entertainment kicking a rock down the street for 2 hours than going through the slog that was Blitz. Blitz's not genuinely offensive, and that's the film's major fault. It's the safest telling of a historical drama and deals mainly with old cliches and movie tropes revolving around racism on screen. A dry PBS special your grandparents tell you about would be an apt comparison. Every scene felt like it went on for way too long and never went anywhere interesting. Anytime it tapped into anything gripping or captivating, it either didn't follow up on it or moved onto something way more dull. It is a truly underbaked tale that underutilizes its phenomenal cast. I will never have to worry about trying to fall asleep on an airplane again as I will have Blitz qued up and ready, so don't worry.

Blitz follows George (Elliott Heffernan), who is sent off by his mother, Rita (Saoirse Ronan), to a safe location via train during the Blitz bombings of London during WW2. George wants to return to his mother, so he jumps off the train and goes on an adventure to reunite with his mother back in London.

Blitz hinges on the performances and the connection between George and Rita, and they never got there for me. Saoirse Ronan is doing everything you can to move you, but I have never bought into the love between mother and son. She's genuinely never given a moment to pop off the screen. She looks stunning and brave, but no actions or words cut deep into you. This comes from the basic script, but anything revolving around the loss of her husband, the fear of the war, and missing her son just never landed for me and could be mainly related to the basic script. George is annoying, and I would never blame a child actor who falls onto the director's feet. George mostly pouts, runs, and falls on his face for two and a half hours, and that's fine. I get it. He's got a lot of terrible stuff around him, but could you spare a little whimsy? Please, I beg. Most characters here play basic archetypes you've seen a million times before and are forgettable. Harrison Dickinson is in this film, and you might miss him because I couldn't tell you the point of him being here.

The setting in this anxiety-riddled wartime would make you believe you'd be on the edge of your seat for most of the runtime. WRONG. Let's drag out scene after scene, subplot after subplot that goes nowhere. Women workers uniting? It could be interesting, but let's move on. How's the underground movement going? Here's one scene that was never brought up again. Are you learning more about Rita's husband and their relationship? Let's give him one scene where we get this ridiculous cliche racism scene straight out of Green Book and never pick back up on that. Oh, George is forced to work for a disgusting gang that robs dead bodies from those blown up by the Germans? Wow, that's dark and interesting. Maybe we should. Oh wait, George ran off again and moved on. I scoffed in the film when there's this thrilling scene where George is caught underwater and has to go between this gate to save these people stuck in the underground. That would be interesting and exciting to see on screen, but NOPE, we fade to black, and he wakes up the following day to a lovely British lady telling him and us, the audience, how brave he was to save those people. That would have been nice to see on screen.

As I mentioned before, the pacing is a chore. Just scenes lingering on for too long, and the payoff is rarely satisfying. There are several decent set pieces, such as the flooding sequence late in the film, but something here has less juice. Its portrayal of racism of the time is surface level, and its themes seem so dependent on you being about classical idealized liberal Aaron Sorkin's ass "We must all come together and make a better world" stuff that's so detached from the reality and horrors of the real world. What weirded me about the film was how it treated each of its main black characters outside George. Like his father, he gets one scene where we know nothing of his personality, and he gets immediately hate-crimed and deported. A Military Policeman from Nigeria named Ife (Benjamin Clementine) befriends George and helps George accept his blackness in some cliche fashion, of course, but Ife is immediately bombed off-screen. Finally, we are greeted by a black woman who takes George in after he faces another plain form of movie racism by a baker. Still, this black woman immediately betrays George and essentially sells him to the gang that wants him to steal off dead bodies and loot buildings. Just fucking bizarre choice here.

Blitz is just perfectly fine. Its direction, score, and editing are all fine. I have no notes on those because they were all FINE. With such an enthralling setting and story to be told here, this was a natural swing and a miss from McQueen, whose work has been boundary-pushing for over a decade. People will call this a classic old-fashioned wartime drama, but it’s just old and stale. It is a safe and quaint movie that will scratch an itch for some who love this period but, for most, will be there to fall asleep before bed film of the year.

Final Score: 5/10

Written by Kevin J. Pettit