Blitz: Hostile London

The first beat of Blitz immediately signals to you that you are in danger. Far away from heroic depictions of a London on the defensive, we are instead confronted with immediate and benign terror. Sure, it’s an air raid - but we’re following firefighters. And the enemy they fight is a high pressure water hose that has just knocked one of them unconscious.

What proceeds is a bread and butter, full tilt British WW2 movie, with two key differences - race has been reintroduced to the story after being erased from the conversation, and you can’t trust the film to save you.

When I say this, I mean this is the kind of movie to make you second guess getting on the tube. In these modern times of geopolitical turmoil, it even makes you second guess living in London at all.

The sound design was particularly effective at making you scared despite yourself - and no one is safe. Each scare sets up the next. Each mass death made me think of Palestine. Each shot of London bombed into ruin made me think of Lebanon and Ukraine. Each moment our little protagonist escaped death, I thought of Yemen. Watching the tube scene (you’ll know it when you see it) made me pray for the southern US recovering from Helene while Milton makes landfall, with no escape or evacuation.

And not wanting to leave your mum? Reminded me of Sudan.

Films like this have a habit of shocking the public into a reminder that these cities, and our safety, are fleeting, tenuous promises that can and will be taken away from us. I often feel we don’t take that far enough, and think of those currently experiencing that horror. Any of us can become the eye of a global political storm that takes out safest and most beloved people and places away.

I felt the reintroduction of race to this story was timely and needed, and was integral in building the dangerous atmosphere, where the jovial British spirit can be lost and turned in an instant -  but unfortunately there were elements of how it was handled I still had personal issue with. As I don’t want to hamper the films momentum, I will keep those elements to myself for now.

I do not recommend this for anyone that had watched the last year of bombardment in Gaza and been paralysed by it. If you’ve done any work to get your life moving again amidst that tragedy, this film will take you right back and not in a good way - Steve McQueen has even referenced the similarity himself. For you, I prescribe it on the small screen if at all.

For everyone else, i’m not telling you not to watch it, just beware — this is not Slow Steve McQueen, this is almost a horror movie. Tread with caution.