'Blitz' Review: Steve McQueen’s WWII Movie Is Another Historical Triumph

It feels like we’ve seen just about every WWII story that can be thought of. Steven Spielberg has taken us to the bloody chaos of Normandy as well as the glimmer of humanity found in the most hopeless of places; Quentin Tarantino has put a comedic, historically inaccurate spin on the U.S.’s takedown of the Nazis; we’ve gotten love stories, zombie horror films, and children’s tales during this period in time. What many of the most famous WWII films have in common is that they follow the heroism and bravery of the allies, particularly the U.S. and Great Britain, as they fight the rise of Hitler and Nazism. It’s very rare that we see how war affected those miles from the frontlines; single mothers, the working class, and people of color.

Oscar-winning filmmaker Steve McQueen sets out to remedy this by pulling audiences into a few days and nights of unrelenting bedlam, following the people of London trying to survive the Blitz of 1940. McQueen is not interested in glorifying white male soldiers, taking smoke from Churchill’s cigar and blowing it up his ass, or romanticizing a period that saw endless innocent lives lost. What McQueen wants to show is the power and importance of humankind coming together in the face of seemingly insurmountable devastation.

What Is 'Blitz' About?

Blitz follows Rita (Saoirse Ronan), a working-class factory worker living in the East End with her father, Gerald (Paul Weller), and her young son, George (Elliott Heffernan). George’s father, a Black man from Grenada, is not in the picture, but it’s clear that it’s not by choice. The movie takes place in September of 1940, the beginning of the infamous Blitz, a period when the German forces consistently dropped bombs over London. After another midnight evacuation to the underground tube station, Rita finally acquiesces to sending George to the safety of the countryside. It’s a decision she doesn’t take lightly and George doesn’t take well at all. He tells her he hates her and won’t look at her as the train departs the station.

Rita’s colleagues and friends at the ammunition factory try to cheer her up, but nothing can distract her from how much she misses her son. Meanwhile, George, already bullied by other children on the train for his race, decides to make his way home to London. He jumps from the moving train and from there, he embarks on several days and nights through the crumbling, blazing, and tragic mayhem of wartorn London. His journey home sees him cross paths with all types of characters, from a kindly soldier who takes him into his care to a group of conniving thieves with more sinister intentions. Blitz sets George on a rollercoaster of the highs and lows of humanity.

A boy’s journey home to his mother when he’s been sent away for his safety doesn’t sound like the most compelling plot for a World War II movie. It might make you think of Narnia rather than a movie from one of the greatest living filmmakers. It’s also an absurd hero’s journey because the “hero” only descends further into danger. From the second George jumps off that train, you’re waiting for an adult to find him and send him back to safety. However, it becomes clear quite quickly that George’s odyssey isn’t the crux of the film; it’s the necessary narrative that allows McQueen to execute what the film is really about: showing what life was like in London during that time.

We see this through Rita’s movements as well. She can no longer forget about the realities of life by drinking with her friends and flirting with soldiers. We see in flashbacks her doing what young people should — drinking dancing, and falling in love — but life has hardened her, and she has seen first-hand how cruel it can be. She volunteers at a homeless shelter, giving us one of the most poignant scenes of the film as Mickey (Leigh Gill in a limited but deeply affecting performance) makes a speech to the shelter on the importance of community and people of all races, classes, and religions coming together when it feels like all hope is lost. His quip of Jesus sounding like a Communist as Christians live by the ethos “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is just one of many lines in Blitz that ridicule the very ideals that have driven divides within communities for centuries.

Steve McQueen Shines a Light on Minorities During WWII

What Steve McQueen is doing with Blitz reminded me of what Irish playwright Sean O’Casey did almost 100 years ago with his groundbreaking play, The Plough and the Stars. In 1926, when Ireland was still celebrating its victory over Great Britain and independence after the 1916 Easter Rising, O’Casey ventured to show how this bloodshed, violence, and battle affected children, women, mentally ill people, sex workers, and all lower-class citizens. O’Casey’s work was met with protests because of its unflinching takedown of the glory of war and how it’s not as triumphant as we like to think it is. While McQueen’s work may not feel as new-wave in this day and age, it’s certainly a refreshing entry into a genre that has been overstuffed with white men yelling and shooting.

The character in Blitz who most resembles the heroic solider we’re used to seeing headlines in these types of movies is the gentle Ife (Benjamin Clementine), a Nigerian-British soldier who meets George as he is looking through a museum of the British Empire, slowly realizing how people who look like him have been subjected to systematic cruelty for centuries. Ife stops a white man from creating a division in the shelter as he doesn’t want to look at the faces of Muslim people, Jewish families, and other people “not like him.” The heroes in Blitz aren’t the big dogs but those who are doing what they can to protect the most vulnerable.

Blitz, much like The Plough and the Stars, has no interest in making a war story like we've seen before. The focus isn't on the Allies vs. the Nazis, but on parents who are forced to send their children away, working-class folk who have to fight the police to take cover, and minorities who have to do all this while fighting everyday aggressions. It may seem odd to call a film so shrouded in tragedy and violence a love letter to a city, but McQueen is making an ode to the spirit of Londoners here. He takes the glory that cinema has historically reserved for soldiers and high-ranking officers and gives it to the lower classes, Muslims, Jewish people, children left orphaned by war, and a young Black kid who just wants his mother. While McQueen gave us an unrelenting look at human resilience in 12 Years a Slave, Blitz is an even more personal venture and is McQueen's most sentimental picture to date.

'Blitz' Immerses Us in the Danger and Horror of War

McQueen is now known for taking a no-holds-barred approach to how cruel people can be to each other. His 2013 Best Picture winner, 12 Years a Slave, is an endurance test and displays lengthy scenes of physical abuse on helpless Black slaves. Here, we don’t see as much human-on-human violence, and that’s because McQueen lets the danger of war speak for itself. The opening scene shows firefighters trying to get hold of an uncontrollable hose as fire blazes through bombed houses. The person next to me had to put their fingers in their ears, as the string-heavy score out of a classic horror movie blends with the raving blaze of the fire.

This is undoubtedly McQueen’s most immersive film yet. Every set piece, whether it’s a flooding train station, a lively and jovial jazz club, or the quiet comfort of Rita, George, and Gerald playing the piano, you feel like you’re in the room with the characters, which is what makes the more tragic set scenes so affecting. No scene better displays this, as McQueen brings us through the throes of a swinging night in an upscale club. People are celebrating engagements, immensely talented musicians are performing, and people seem stupidly happy. Then, we watch as George is forced by the gang to poach the jewelry off the dead bodies of those we just saw in a flashback bursting with life.

'Blitz' Isn't About Rita and George But the Entire Population of London

It’s become a cheesy slogan to say a city is a character in a story, as it’s mostly used for New York-set rom-coms. But here, London is the main player. Ronan’s Rita and Heffernan’s George get the top billing, but the central characters are all the different folk they meet along the way. McQueen imbues every character with so much depth that no one feels one-note. Even the villainous thief Albert (Stephen Graham, who simply cannot turn in a bad performance) represents what happens when those with severe mental illness don’t get the treatment they need. Saoirse Ronan, to the surprise of no one, is brilliant, even if it’s by no means her meatiest role. She plays the worried mother to perfection, but she really shines as a conflicted person desperately trying to find hope among the wreckage and do better by her community.

The entire movie hinges on George and Rita’s relationship, and Heffernan, in his debut, is a perfect match for Ronan. He’s able to maintain his childlike innocence while reckoning with racism, death, grief, and war, never playing it too adult-like or infantile. A particular stand-out is Benjamin Clementine, whose introduction is perfectly timed. After George is consistently chased and grabbed, Clementine's Ife is the much-needed calming presence and semblance of what the best of humanity can look like. He may not be on the frontlines or flying over Dunkirk beach, but he's just as much a hero, representing the ethos of the movie that basic human decency and respect shouldn't be lost in a time of such despair; if anything, it's needed even more. The only notable disappointment regarding the cast is how criminally underused Harris Dickinson is, as he simply mutters and yearns for Rita across the street.

After crafting one of the best historical epics of this century with 12 Years a Slave, the bar was in the sky for Steven McQueen in returning to historical dramas of this scale. Suffice it to say, he rose to it and then some. It's not a perfect movie, with its rushed and anticlimactic ending. Still, for those looking for the scope and empathy he wielded with his Oscar-winner but maybe want something slightly more digestible, Blitz will deliver and is sure to be a prominent awards contender. It’s probably the largest slice-of-life movie you can think of, as McQueen essentially makes a movie about the human experience that just so happens to take place across one of the deadliest acts of warfare in history. It’s a deeply soulful and affecting movie that sends you into a tornado of emotions. With immersive action set pieces, heartfelt snippets of character-driven stories, and fantastic performances all around, Steve McQueen shows again his adept ability at bringing such enormous scope to deeply personal human stories.

Blitz is now available to watch on Apple TV+ in the U.S.

Watch on Apple TV+