Blitz review: a child’s eye view of war

Blitz stars Saoirse Ronan as a mother who tries to send her child to safety outside London during the Blitz at the beginning of World War II. The real star of the movie is Elliott Heffernan, her young son, who was having none of it.

Blitz begins with scenes of London burning and destroyed. Rita (Ronan) works in a munitions factory. She’s a single mom. She lives with her dad (Paul Weller) and her mixed-race child George (Heffernan). We see what happened to his father, Marcus (CJ Beckford), in a flashback. Rita and her father decide it’s too dangerous in London and do what many did at the time – agree to send their child to the countryside to be cared for by strangers until it was safe to come back.

George feels safe at home with his family. Because he is mixed race he gets lots of bullying. George doesn’t want to leave his home and family.

Rita puts him on the train with hundreds of other children anyway. He rides for a while and says the heck with it, jumps off the train and starts heading back where he came from. From this point on it’s like one of those lost pet movies where pure instinct drives the return to home.

He hops trains heading back to London, meets a very nice Black air warden, Ife (Benjamin Clémentine). Ife actually makes him proud to be Black for the first time in his life. He gets shanghaied into a gang of thieves led by Beryl (Kathy Burke), runs from collapsing buildings, scrambles around dead bodies, and almost drowns.

Rita finds out on the second day of George’s run for it that he never got where he was going. She drops everything and starts searching for him.

Tired, hungry, wet, lost – George doesn’t care. He’s going home and that’s that. The only thing that slows him down is night coming and bombs whistling down from the sky.

Blitz was written and directed by Steve McQueen. Some of what he did was effective and strong. Some parts where he tried to be “arty” didn’t work for me. Crazy swirling motion that turned into a field of daisies or flashing lights that turned into ocean waves under the German bombers. Just why?

The bombing scenes, the destruction of London, and the determined George were high points. The trailer gives you a good preview without revealing any big spoilers. This drama is an Apple TV+ original.