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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.

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