Posts tagged The Iron Lady

“Slapped Together”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

The Iron Lady is yet another acting triumph for Meryl Streep as she plays Margaret Thatcher, the longest-seated prime minister of Great Britain in the 20th century from 1979 to 1990, the first woman prime minister, and at various times in her political career the most hated woman in Great Britain.

In fact, she was loved and hated in office as much as her contemporary President Ronald Reagan was in the U.S. and for the same reasons: They both had conservative values and free-market ideology that helped transform their respective countries into industrially depleted and increasingly unequal societies.

In addition, they both danced–sometimes together–while the countries they led were suffering.

The film opens in the present day with Margaret as an old woman out shopping, and when she returns to her flat, her daughter, Carol, tells her that she shouldn’t go out on her own, to which Margaret replies, “If I can’t go out to buy a pint of milk, what is the world coming to?”

Then we see flashbacks to when Margaret was a young woman whose name was Margaret Roberts, played by a different actress, Alexandra Roach, and she is not portrayed as a very likable woman.

And, yes, the film shifts back and forth in time so much in the style that filmmakers seem to prefer these days that you might ask yourself is the whole movie going to be like this?

And the answer is, yes, it is.

We also see Margaret’s husband, Denis Thatcher, played as an old man by Jim Broadbent, and once again the filmmakers try to trick the audience into believing that a scene of fantasy and Margaret’s delusional dotage is reality.

In fact, Broadbent might spend more screen time dead than he does alive.

Major events during Thatcher’s career as prime minister are covered, such as the 1982 Falklands War, the 1984 miners’ strike, the 1984 IRA bombing of a hotel hosting a conference of the Conservative Party, and her replacement as prime minister after a rebellion by her colleagues.

We even see some scenes in which she is advised about her clothes and the way she speaks in public.

The Iron Lady is so slapped together that when it ends, you don’t even realize that this is the scene in which the movie is ending.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”