‘Blitz’ Review: Steve McQueen’s World War II Film Is Skillful and Touching Yet Almost Shockingly Conventional
variety.comOwen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic In London, late in 1940, the German bombs fall, erupting into an inferno of buildings gutted by glowing orange flame.
People die right in their living rooms, seated in their armchairs. In the streets, the air-raid sirens scream as surging civilians surround a barricaded underground train station, trying to get the police to let them in.
This is the desperate face of war. And yet…life goes on. Many of the buildings look like skeletons, but the shops and markets stay open, by day people walk the streets, and the swank patrons of a dance club party into the night… As a filmmaker, the British director Steve McQueen might be one of the last old-school classicists.
That’s not necessarily the first thing you think of when you see a McQueen film like “12 Years a Slave,” with its lacerating vision of human cruelty and resilience, or “Hunger,” about the Irish prison hero Bobby Sands.
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