The Iron Lady: Double Play (Blu-ray)

"We simply have to maximise your appeal" purr Margaret Thatcher's advisors as they drop her voice and raise her hair to clinch the 1975 Conservative Party leadership, in this whip-smart and stylish but surprisingly breathless biopic.
Director Phyllida Lloyd's controversial character study doesn't shy away from giving an equally unsettling Maggie makeover to the most dominant and divisive figure in post war British politics.
Plagued by hallucinations of her long dead husband Denis, Meryl Streep's memorably haunted geriatric heroine shows us a softer, even sympathetic side of Thatcher, as encroaching dementia tips her out of the present day into vivid flashbacks that take her from Grantham grocer's daughter to her so called glory years.
In this full throttle feminist reappraisal of Mrs T's outsize life, she's portrayed as the Downing Street diva, with politics a stage where she successively battles Labour scorn, Tory snobbery in Ted Heath's cabinet and rebellious 'wets' like Richard E Grant's preening Michael Heseltine in her own party.
History rattles past as a sequence of operatically stylised snapshots of her key moments as Prime Minister, showing her shaken but unbowed by the Brighton bombing, and snapping out a stern order to sink the Belgrano during the Falklands War. There's no bigger picture to find here, since Lloyd deliberately narrows the film's focus to Thatcher's point-of-view, albeit one with wit and bravado.The script deftly tosses in regrets as well as respect, as Jim Broadbent's gloriously playful phantom Denis goads Thatcher about the fierce ambition behind her sense of public duty, or shows up her patchy mothering of the overlooked Carol (a wonderfully strained Olivia Colman). But alongside an epic clash like Frost/Nixon or The Queen's revelations, The Iron Lady's interweaving of a two day crisis in Mrs Thatcher's old age (chucking Denis's clothes, reliving their fond, lifelong romance, grappling with mental decline) with the famous fights of her prime looks a bit ho hum. Muting the present day's sounds and colours while the '80s pop with brash colour and crashing confrontations only compounds its lopsidedness.Stripped down, the story's primarily an enjoyably shiny setting for Streep's jaw droppingly brilliant performance. Less an impersonation than an uncanny recreation (the ageing make up is flawless), she captures Thatcher perfectly, from her hectoring heyday to her stubbornly steely dotage. Underneath the immaculate carapace of hairspray, charisma and conviction politics, she creates a subtle, stress-riven portrait of a woman reckoning up an extraordinary life as unflinchingly as she lived it.
The Iron Lady seems to be a rose tinted view of her years in power, it brushes of key aspects of the '80 such as the miners strike and the Falklands conflict and the film will be loved as much as it's loathed, but to get past the politics and the still open wounds The Iron Lady is a good film (but not as good as it should have been) but it's Streep's performance that truly shines.
See if you like....
The Queen.
The Kings Speech.
Scandel.
Frost/Nixon.
This is England.

"We simply have to maximise your appeal" purr Margaret Thatcher's advisors as they drop her voice and raise her hair to clinch the 1975 Conservative Party leadership, in this whip-smart and stylish but surprisingly breathless biopic.
Director Phyllida Lloyd's controversial character study doesn't shy away from giving an equally unsettling Maggie makeover to the most dominant and divisive figure in post war British politics.
Plagued by hallucinations of her long dead husband Denis, Meryl Streep's memorably haunted geriatric heroine shows us a softer, even sympathetic side of Thatcher, as encroaching dementia tips her out of the present day into vivid flashbacks that take her from Grantham grocer's daughter to her so called glory years.
In this full throttle feminist reappraisal of Mrs T's outsize life, she's portrayed as the Downing Street diva, with politics a stage where she successively battles Labour scorn, Tory snobbery in Ted Heath's cabinet and rebellious 'wets' like Richard E Grant's preening Michael Heseltine in her own party.
History rattles past as a sequence of operatically stylised snapshots of her key moments as Prime Minister, showing her shaken but unbowed by the Brighton bombing, and snapping out a stern order to sink the Belgrano during the Falklands War. There's no bigger picture to find here, since Lloyd deliberately narrows the film's focus to Thatcher's point-of-view, albeit one with wit and bravado.The script deftly tosses in regrets as well as respect, as Jim Broadbent's gloriously playful phantom Denis goads Thatcher about the fierce ambition behind her sense of public duty, or shows up her patchy mothering of the overlooked Carol (a wonderfully strained Olivia Colman). But alongside an epic clash like Frost/Nixon or The Queen's revelations, The Iron Lady's interweaving of a two day crisis in Mrs Thatcher's old age (chucking Denis's clothes, reliving their fond, lifelong romance, grappling with mental decline) with the famous fights of her prime looks a bit ho hum. Muting the present day's sounds and colours while the '80s pop with brash colour and crashing confrontations only compounds its lopsidedness.Stripped down, the story's primarily an enjoyably shiny setting for Streep's jaw droppingly brilliant performance. Less an impersonation than an uncanny recreation (the ageing make up is flawless), she captures Thatcher perfectly, from her hectoring heyday to her stubbornly steely dotage. Underneath the immaculate carapace of hairspray, charisma and conviction politics, she creates a subtle, stress-riven portrait of a woman reckoning up an extraordinary life as unflinchingly as she lived it.
The Iron Lady seems to be a rose tinted view of her years in power, it brushes of key aspects of the '80 such as the miners strike and the Falklands conflict and the film will be loved as much as it's loathed, but to get past the politics and the still open wounds The Iron Lady is a good film (but not as good as it should have been) but it's Streep's performance that truly shines.
See if you like....
The Queen.
The Kings Speech.
Scandel.
Frost/Nixon.
This is England.

I went into this film expecting it to be a spin off of Iron Man in the vain of Supergirl etc. What I got was a film about some old lady who ran a country for a bit. She didn't even have a high tech armour suit. The villian wasn't even good. He was just a leader of some coal miners. Avoid if you are looking for an action film

The Iron Lady (2011) is a biopic drama starring Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Olivia Colman, Anthony Head and Richard E Grant.

Meryl Streep won a well deserved Oscar for her performance as Margaret Thatcher but she so completely dominates this movie that the rest of the cast are reduced to forgettable supporting roles.

Director Phyllida Lloyd (Mamma Mia) fails to give the movie any truly dramatic moments. Streep perfectly captures Thatcher (particularly the voice) but the movie is a mess bouncing from one timeline to another.

What could have been a fascinating biopic instead flounders with confusing moments tied together by Streep. And as good as Streep is Margaret Thatcher is a difficult character to warm to and this movie is at times unwatchable.