Blitz review: Perilous trip into wartime underworld for the Blitz's Oliver Twist, writes BRIAN VINER By Brian Viner For The Daily Mail Published: 17:32 EDT, 9 October 2024 | Updated: 17:46 EDT, 9 October 2024 e-mail View comments This year’s London Film Festival could not have had a more appropriate curtain-raiser last night than Blitz, a stirring drama set in September 1940, just after the Luftwaffe began its intense eight-month bombing campaign on the city. It felt downright eerie to leave the cinema on London’s Southbank and see, across the Thames, the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral – once the city’s structural symbol of resistance against Hitler. Working-class Londoners, of course, have always been a human symbol of resistance in World War II , depicted over and over on screen as the epitome of doughty, selfless pluck.
But in Blitz, writer-director Sir Steve McQueen is not afraid to blow up that time-honoured image. Blitz is a drama set in September 1940, just after the Luftwaffe began its intense eight-month bombing campaign on the city Some of the characters in this enjoyably absorbing film have distilled the cherished Blitz spirit into something sour. For instance, while everyone else is rolling out the barrel, there’s a criminal gang at work, stripping the dead of their jewels.
McQueen’s focus is an East End family of three. Single mum Rita (Saoirse Ronan) shares a terraced house with her nine-year-old son George (impressive newcomer Elliott Heffernan.