Blitz
Apple TV+ | Release Date (Streaming): November 1, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
71
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 53 Critic Reviews
Positive:
36
Mixed:
16
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
ABC NewsPeter TraversNov 15, 2024
Set against the German bombing of London, Steve McQueen stirring WW2 epic misses greatness by failing to fully engage with the starker, deeper implications of seeing war through the eyes of a mixed-race child facing an evil that’s scarily close to home Read full review
60
The Irish TimesTara BradyNov 7, 2024
Blitz lacks the emotional heft of Hunger or the director’s Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave, but it’s an absorbing, reliable depiction of a much-mythologised historical moment. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Xan BrooksNov 4, 2024
What the film-maker has built for us here is the cinematic equivalent of an Anderson shelter: basic, sturdy and unfussy. It’s there if we need it and have nowhere else to go. Read full review
60
SlateDana StevensNov 1, 2024
McQueen clearly wants to broaden the archetype of stiff-upper-lip Englishness into something more inclusive. It’s a worthy message, but one that sometimes seems to take precedence over the characters and story rather than emerging organically from them. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreOct 14, 2024
It’s the worst movie McQueen’s made, which by wider standards means that it’s still not bad. But Blitz’s admirable intentions consistently outstrip its execution, which is clunky and full of narrative artifices required to keep its angel-faced lead on the run from danger and from the authorities who intend to send him back to the train station. Read full review
60
The Daily BeastNick SchagerOct 11, 2024
A narratively and emotionally disjointed journey, its fine lead performances, moving details, and racial commentary never cohering into an affecting spectacular. Read full review
60
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeOct 9, 2024
For all the disappointments, McQueen has delivered a grand mainstream entertainment that puts pressure on the tear ducts as it uncovers unspoken truths. Read full review
60
Screen DailyFionnuala HalliganOct 9, 2024
Oddly enough, in trying to capture a time that was wracked by scarcity, by the idea of make-do-and-mend, by the plucky spirit of the men and women under the might of the machines, Blitz just fires far too much heavy artillery. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterLeslie FelperinOct 9, 2024
While there’s much to admire here . . . the drama too often lacks the subtlety that distinguishes the British writer-director’s work at its best. Two hours long, practically to the second, this feels like a project that’s been excessively trimmed, snipped and tapered to fit an arbitrary running time. Read full review
60
BBCNicholas BarberOct 9, 2024
The film is interesting and informative, but all those bomb blasts don't leave you as shaken as they should. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawOct 9, 2024
Steve McQueen finds the key of C major for this well made and unashamedly old-fashioned wartime adventure, heartfelt and rousing and – yes – a bit trad overall, sometimes even channelling the spirit of Lionel Jeffries’s The Railway Children, although for me that’s no put-down. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithNov 1, 2024
Mr. McQueen seems consciously to be shedding his past style—the icy minimalism of “Hunger” and “Shame” and the scarifying gauntlet of his Oscar-winning “Twelve Years a Slave”—in a bid to make a big, warm-hearted, conventional holiday-season tear-jerker. Yet the film . . . will strike many viewers as a bait-and-switch exercise. Read full review
50
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiOct 25, 2024
While Blitz may not be transformative, it isn’t all bad. McQueen is a capable director who deftly moves between different points in time, offering a glimpse into Rita and George’s life before and during the war. Read full review
50
IGNSiddhant AdlakhaOct 16, 2024
Blitz's piercing sound design can't make up for its bloodless depiction of World War II, its scattered sense of place, and its saccharine approach to overcoming racial hostility. Saoirse Ronan is captivating in the role of a single white mother to a defiant Black son trying to make his way back home, but the movie can't seem to balance her talents with its own timeline. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineDavid RobbOct 11, 2024
Blitz is an earnest, broad-strokes portrait of a bustling city that occasionally succeeds in communicating the unprecedented sensory shock of modern warfare, but its uncritical craftsmanship and quarantining of past atrocities from present-day concerns also render the proceedings mostly lifeless. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerNov 7, 2024
In George’s odyssey, McQueen attempts to emulate and skewer the classic British boys’ own adventures by juxtaposing it with social realism, but it ends up divided between the two instincts. Blitz is also burdened by a surprisingly leaden script filled with paper-thin Cockney stereotypes. Read full review
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