BLITZ (2024) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Steve McQueen
Saoirse Ronan, Elliott Heffernan, Harris Dickinson,
Benjamin Clémentine, Paul Weller, Stephen Graham
In 1940, with Hitler's bombs exploding all over London, a single mother sends her mixed-race son away from the city, hoping to keep him safe, and returns to her job in a munitions plant. The boy, played with watchful resilience by Elliott Heffernan, escapes into the countryside by jumping off a train, and embarks on a perilous journey, trying to get back home. Saoirse Ronan plays his mum. It's a look at wartime Britain you don't normally see, part "Hope and Glory" and part "Oliver Twist", casting a lens on street-level crime and racism that's ugly, to say the least. There are some stylish visual flourishes in McQueen's direction, and the pyrotechnics are some of the best ever. (The footage of firefighters struggling to corral a runaway hose while fighting an inferno is hair-raising.) The music's by Hans Zimmer.
