During the London Blitz, Rita Hanway (Saoirse Ronan) puts her young son (Elliott Heffernan) on a train headed for the countryside, but he jumps off and tries to make his way back to the city.

In this handsomely produced film, Steve McQueen puts the working class, women and people of color front and center of the horrors of the Blitz. Successful on several levels, as an exciting thriller where young George encounters many wartime dangers during his journey, and as a realistic portrait of life in London at the time, some events inspired by real-life tragedies.

Less effective as an emotional punch in the gut, but a good cast.

2024-U.K.-U.S. 120 min. Color. Widescreen. Written and directed by Steve McQueen. Cinematography: Yorick Le Saux. Music: Hans Zimmer. Cast: Saoirse Ronan (Rita Hanway), Elliott Heffernan (George Hanway), Harris Dickinson (Jack), Benjamin Clementine, Kathy Burke, Paul Weller, Stephen Graham. 

Trivia: Co-produced by McQueen. 

Last word: “You write something, and then you put the script down and go, ‘Okay, not bad. Oh my goodness gracious, we’ve got to find a kid! Does a kid like George actually exist?’ So we cast the net broad and wide. And then Elliott’s tape came in, and there was just a real stillness in him in his eyes. And it’s like that kind of photograph or that image you have on a wall, where you look at that image, and you’re going left, and you’re going right, and you think you understand it, or even if you don’t understand it, you want to understand it.” (McQueen, Entertainment Weekly)