Blitz. 2024. UK. Written and directed by Steve McQueen. With Saoirse Ronan, Elliott Heffernan, Harris Dickinson. DCP courtesy Apple. 120 min.
In his fifth foray into fiction, Steve McQueen moves further into the mainstream with a period drama about life under fire that recalls classic British wartime cinema of the 1940s. Forced to relocate to the countryside by his widowed mother (Saoirse Ronan) during the Blitz, a nine-year old boy (the irresistible Elliott Heffernan) makes a harrowing journey across war-torn London to get home. A series of challenging encounters with people across different social classes teaches the boy, who is struggling with his own biracial identity, to better appreciate who he is. Touching lightly on issues of racism, antisemitism, and female empowerment that he’s explored more directly in his previous work—and featuring memorable set pieces like a ferocious firefight and a macabre nightclub sequence—McQueen’s visually arresting, Dickensian epic is his most classical, audience-friendly film to date.