What to Watch Verdict
Blitz may be a whistle-stop tour of characters, locations and themes that doesn't linger on its ideas long enough, but it looks great and has enough shocking moments and powerful performances to be worth a watch.
Pros
- +
Newcomer Elliott Heffernan carries the movie
- +
The production design looks fantastic
Cons
- -
Barely explores its themes
- -
Wastes its supporting cast
Apple TV Plus's sporadic movie releases generally involve handing established directors blank checks to make vast epics; next up is Blitz from 12 Years a Slave and Widows director Steve McQueen, set in Britain during World War Two.
Starring Saoirse Ronan as East London mother Rita and newcomer Elliott Heffernan as her mixed-race son George, Blitz is about the latter who's evacuated to the countryside... except he jumps from the train an hour out of London, and proceeds on foot back to his Stepney Green home.
Going on his own little Odyssey, George meets a wide cast of characters on his journey home. The first two of these are a group of young brothers who help George reclaim his childhood in the midst of the war, and Benjamin Clementine's Ife, a Black patrolman who helps George better understand his racial identity. After setting up this idea of his return journey as a quest of self-discovery, the movie promptly forgets it, dropping him in the lap of a group of looters then a series of action set pieces that mark the most exciting scenes of the movie but don't touch on his personal growth.
In the meantime, we spend a lot of time with Rita, as she struggles with the deportation of her husband and feelings of guilt at abandoning George. Through her, we see depictions of many issues facing Britain in the 1940s like racial injustice and women's role in the war. However, her plot has very little bearing on the main story and probably didn't need as much screen time.
There are some big names in the supporting cast including Harris Dickinson as local firefighter Jack, Stephen Graham as underworld thief Albert and Paul Weller as Rita's father Gerald. All have such little screen time that I'd be surprised if a Napoleon-style director's cut wasn't on the way, restoring whatever character arcs currently lie on the cutting-room floor (adding credence to this is that the movie was originally billed to be 30 minutes longer than it already is).
The highlight of Blitz is George, with Heffernan's understated performance carrying us through all of his scenes. He's quiet, letting the world define itself through how it interacts with him, but with enough moments of agency and quiet emotion we can still understand what George is feeling. I'd go so far as to say that Blitz would be a more enjoyable movie if it stuck with the boy for its entire runtime.
That's because Blitz feels like a whistle-stop tour through an array of characters, themes and locations, not always giving us enough time to connect to any of them.
As a result, it doesn't feel like Blitz has much going on under the surface, especially once all notions of George's quest being personal are forgotten. The emotive introductory text and some dramatic shots of women building bombs early on suggest that the movie could touch on the bombing that Britain rained on Germany, while the plight of the women factory workers gets teased in the second act and Albert's pilfering team almost sets up class issues as a theme, but they're all hinted at and never really explored in a meaningful way. I even picked up on a few crumbs of Covid commentary in the optimism of Rita saying that it'll 'all blow over soon' but I might be reaching here.
Thankfully, then, it's a good-looking movie. Care was taken to ensure the props, costumes and locations feel authentic to the time period, while the frequent musical segments give Ronan a time to shine both for dancing and singing. Hans Zimmer's score is certainly overbearing at many points but there's a fantastic moment when we're in a destroyed concert hall in which the score repeats motifs from the music playing at the party in the same hall the night before, which can make the overly-dramatic moments forgivable.
Plus it has some really shocking and exciting moments peppered throughout, with McQueen infrequently reminding us that the horrors of war aren't just on the front line. These moments work wonders in keeping you interested in the story in slower moments.
I should mention that Blitz feels to be aimed at an American audience, no doubt a symptom of Apple TV Plus distribution. An opening crawl explains what the Blitz was, something that most Brits would (should?) know, while the attempts at "posh" and "East End" accents will raise eyebrows and one key moment only has its dramatic impact if you forget just how noisy British steam trains can be. Plus, people who know their London geography will realize that George spent most of his journey so close to Stepney Green that he could have walked there in less time than the movie's runtime. These might turn off UK viewers who will struggle to suspend disbelief through copious EastEnders-reject accents.
Fans of World War Two tales will love Blitz by default, and it's an interesting look into some cultures and characters that aren't often depicted. However, as a story, it doesn't always feel as fulfilling as it could.
Blitz is coming to select theaters on Friday, November 1, ahead of a release on Apple TV Plus on Friday, November 22
