The Iron Lady (15) (From The Northern Echo)

Film Review: The Iron Lady (15)

3:51pm Friday 6th January 2012 in Reviews By Steve Pratt

Rating: 3/5

GIVE Meryl the Oscar now. A best actress gold-plated statuette will soon by within her grasp for her unnerving impersonation of Margaret Thatcher in a movie about the ex-British PM which arouses strong feelings for and against today as she did when in office.

Click here to check showtimes for The Iron Lady (15)

If only the rest of the film was as good as Meryl Streep’s performance as the lady who wasn’t for turning. But Abi Morgan’s screenplay is sadly lacking the drama that accompanied Mrs – now Lady – T’s time in No 10.

Many of the key moments are replayed – the Falklands war, the miners’ strike and the Brighton bombing among them – but as director Phyllida Lloyd has been keen to emphasise, this isn’t a bio-pic. She views it more as a piece about getting old, grieving and the loss of power.

Thatcher’s admirers will be disappointed that it doesn’t do enough to glorify Britain’s first female prime minister. Her critics will be angry that it doesn’t expose her as the woman who ran roughshod over the people and ruined the country.

What we get is Lady T wandering around her flat in old age, suffering from dementia while imagining that dead husband Denis (Jim Broadbent) is still alive and having conversations with her.

This provides Streep with much opportunity to show off her skill for doing accents and for the prosthetics people to make a Hollywood star into an aged British politician (and very convincing the make-up is too).

What The Iron Lady lacks is a sense of pace and urgency. Too often it grinds to a halt for yet more chat between Lady T and Denis, with occasional interruptions from Olivia Colman’s Carol Thatcher.

Never mind, you can always play a game of guessing which familiar British actor is going to turn up next as a member of the Cabinet. Oh look, there’s Anthony Head as Geoffrey Howe. And isn’t that Richard E Grant as Michael Heseltine?