Blitz: Steve McQueen’s new WWII movie is a dud.

One thing you could never accuse the English filmmaker Steve McQueen of is making the same movie over and over. On his long and perilous journey home, George will encounter both friends, like Ife, a kindly Nigerian British soldier who helps the boy find his way to one of the many bomb shelters set up in the London Underground, and enemies, like Albert, a villain straight out of Charles Dickens. A bigger structural problem in Blitz has to do with the awkward balancing of its two main storylines: George’s peripatetic travels through London and his mother’s day-to-day life back home. Related From Slate It Seemed Like This Year’s Safest Oscar Pick—Until It Revealed One Final Surprise McQueen has said that he wanted to make this film in part to push back on nostalgic myths about the “keep calm and carry on” stoicism of English people under the Blitz. It would be hard not to root for a child lost in a city under Nazi bombardment to find his way home to his adoring mother, but the obstacle course McQueen sets for his young protagonist is so programmatic it sometimes plays out less like a hero’s journey than like a WWII-themed video game.