Golda
boredgrizzly

Review by boredgrizzly Pro

Golda 2023

★★½

Watched 22 Aug 2023

Helen Mirren gives another outstanding performance to tack onto her stacked resume as former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir during the tumultuous days of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Even buried under a bunch of prosthetic make-up designed to make her look like someone who's lived a hard a stressful life, Mirren is able to work magic as the tough talking, chain smoking, anxiety ridden leader.

But the movie itself is just okay. Writer Nicholas Martin (Florence Foster Jenkins) and director Guy Nattiv (Skin) are aiming this one squarely at the older crowd who'll remember all these events and won't need a detailed refresher. It moves at a nice pace, with a bunch of quick edits and dumps of expository/historical dialogue rattled off in quick fashion, but it all comes at the cost of a more interesting film.

Kinda like Joe Wright's Darkest Hour, but on more of a Masterpiece Theater budget, Golda really isn't a biopic in the strictest sense. This is one of those "famous people at a specific point in their lives" films mashed up with a war movie. It's not really working, especially when the opening positions this intriguingly as an examination of the "consequences of hubris" told through the benefit of hindsight. I didn't really get that from Golda, and I didn't get much else, either.

But Mirren is still wonderful

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