Movie · 2024 · War, Drama, History · 2h · PG-13 · English
Curator score: 3.0/10 (78.2K ratings)
A boy's journey. A mother's love. Miles of burning city between them.
Overview
In World War II London, nine-year-old George is evacuated to the countryside by his mother, Rita, to escape the bombings. Defiant and determined to return to his family, George embarks on an epic, perilous journey back home as Rita searches for him.
Ratings
Curator score: 3.0/10
IMDb: 6.2/10
Letterboxd: 3.03/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 81%
Metacritic: 71
TMDB: 6.0/10
Director
Steve McQueen
Production
Working Title Films, New Regency Pictures, Apple Studios, Lammas Park
Cast
Elliott Heffernan, Saoirse Ronan, Benjamin Clementine, Paul Weller, Stephen Graham, Harris Dickinson, Kathy Burke, Leigh Gill, Mica Ricketts, CJ Beckford, Alex Jennings, Joshua McGuire, Hayley Squires, Erin Kellyman, Sally Messham, Josef Altin, Sandra Huggett, Thea Achillea, Grahame Fox, David Kirkbride
Where to watch
Apple TV Plus
Curator Review
Verdict
A visually assured wartime coming-of-age drama with strong performances and a few striking sequences, but its emotional and narrative focus can feel uneven. It’s worth watching if you’re drawn to prestige historical drama and child-centered survival stories; less so if you want a tightly plotted war film or a fully satisfying Steve McQueen showcase.
Best for
viewers who like WWII dramas told through a child’s perspective
fans of prestige period filmmaking and strong production design
audiences interested in family separation and survival journeys
people who appreciate Saoirse Ronan’s performances
Skip if
you want a lean, propulsive war thriller
you prefer films with a very clear dramatic through-line
you’re looking for McQueen at his most formally rigorous or confrontational
you’re sensitive to tonal shifts between intimate drama and broad wartime spectacle
Overview
Blitz is an ambitious wartime journey film that follows a boy trying to make his way back to his mother through bomb-ravaged London. Steve McQueen brings real craft to the period detail and the physical danger of the setting, and Elliott Heffernan gives the story a sturdy emotional center. Saoirse Ronan, as expected, is excellent and helps anchor the film’s more intimate passages.
Worth noting
The problem is that the movie often feels pulled in different directions. It wants to be a child’s survival odyssey, a social portrait of wartime London, and a broader historical drama about class and community, and those pieces don’t always lock together cleanly. Some sequences are vivid and memorable, but others feel underdeveloped or oddly detached from the central emotional arc.
Bottom line
As a result, Blitz lands more as a handsome, serious, occasionally moving prestige picture than as a fully unified one. If you’re receptive to elegiac war dramas with strong performances and a few standout set pieces, it’s an easy mixed recommendation. If you want McQueen at his most incisive, you may find this one surprisingly restrained.
Top Letterboxd reviews
elle ⋆｡°✩ (3.5★) · 1923 likes
can someone though genuinely please explain to me what the point of harris dickinson’s character was in this movie?? like what does he do??
Adam シ (3★) · 949 likes
to literally no one’s surprise, saoirse ronan is incredible. the day she isn’t one of the best things about a movie she’s in is the day the world ends.
noen (2★) · 882 likes
A conglomerate of subjects and ideas poorly written, does not decide what it wants to be; is it a drama? a war epic? Maybe it wants to be everything, but it just doesn’t work.
cob (3★) · 811 likes
love how harris dickinson’s character serves no purpose whatsoever he’s just there to look fine as hell
davidehrlich (3★) · 773 likes
It’s strange to discover that “Blitz” is the most anonymous movie that Steve McQueen has made thus far, as this pseudo-Dickensian epic — the story of a half-Grenadian boy’s quest to reunite with his guilt-ridden single mother (Saoirse Ronan) after she evacuates him out of London in the fall of 1940 — would appear to be an ideal showcase for his singular vision as a filmmaker.
Drawn towards subjects that allow him to interrogate and expand upon historical notions of… more