Fresh and Exciting

Brilliant and touching

An action-packed slog

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

"Thatcher: The Frail Years" seems both exploitative, and undeservedly sentimental...It's not that it doesn't cover the bad stuff - but the fact that it takes the form of an elderly lady experiencing a long dark night of the soul affords her a distance from her most famous battles that is entirely unwarranted.She suffered... and maybe what goes around comes around - but other people are still suffering from the effects of her policies, and they don't all get a movie of their own.It's all a bit shallow, and smacks of (very fine) actors playing dress- up, instead of the immersive experience it could and SHOULD have been.

"The Irony Lady" is the 2011 biopic depicting the life and career of Margaret Thatcher a British stateswoman who would go on to be both the first and the longest serving Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of the 20th century. For the role of Thatcher herself, the esteemed Meryl Streep brings out her acting chops. Despite the movie's sloppy delivery of the film's plot, Meryl Streep's acting alone makes this film worth watching. In fact, her performance in this film has widely been recognized as among the greatest of her long and distinguished career. That in itself is no small feat considering the extent of Streep's career. She would go on to win her 17th Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in this film.The name of the film stems from soviet journalists colloquial nickname for Thatcher who was a steadfast figure during the most intense period of the Cold War. "The Iron Lady" as a film begins with a series of flashbacks depicting the life of a young Margaret Roberts who grows up working at her family's grocery store. The young Roberts will eventual go on to win a place at the prestigious University of Oxford, which was quite uncommon for a girl at the time. She then uses her education to jump start a career in politics but struggles to make ground in the male-dominated Conservative Party of the United Kingdom. Eventually, thanks to a marriage proposal from a local businessman named Denis Thatcher, the young Roberts enters the House of Commons as a polarizing figure within the Conservative party and begins to dominate Parliament. Her political rise culminates in her eventually rising to the position of Prime Minister, a position in which she serves from 1979-1990.During her tenure as Prime Minister, Thatcher deals with many extraordinary events, often as literally the only woman in the entire room. She witnesses the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall. She takes on the difficult role of a wartime Prime Minister during the Falklands War. She even ruthlessly negotiates with the European Union and her own country's state-owned corporations, surviving an assassination attempt in the process. On one occasion, Thatcher offends a powerful member of her own party and this cements her eventual demise. After being mercilessly forced out of politics by her own party, Thatcher's life takes a dark turn when her lifelong companion and husband dies leaving her all alone. As she ages, the woman is neglected by her children; perhaps as payback for all the neglect she showed her own family during her distinguished political career. It's hard enough to be a woman in politics. But Thatcher attempts to also be a wife and a mother.At the conclusion of the film, an old and mentally withered Thatcher is seen in her kitchen washing dishes. Ironically enough, Thatcher vowed on-screen not to die washing a teacup as a housewife when she began her political career in the presence of her husband. She inevitably passed away in 2013. In the final scene of the film she is seen poignantly washing a teacup.

Margaret Thatcher was a fascinating if controversial woman, who has garnered strong opinions on either side. 'The Iron Lady' also boasted quite a cast, with the likes of Meryl Streep and Jim Broadbent, what could go wrong? The answer is, a lot did. 'The Iron Lady' is not complete dreck, but it could have been much, much better and doesn't do justice to Thatcher at all. The best thing about it is the acting, with the star of the film undoubtedly being the miraculous central performance of Meryl Streep as Thatcher. This is not a caricature or an impersonation, this performance feels genuine and real, showing that Streep did her homework researching Thatcher and her mannerisms.Jim Broadbent brings heart and warmth to the ghostly Dennis, in lesser hands this could have been a gimmick but Streep and Broadbent's chemistry is quite heartfelt and really tries to bring believability to scenes not deserving of that effort. Alexandra Roach is also solid as is an unrecognisable Olivia Coleman. Other than the acting, the make-up is extremely good with the actors very believably made up, the locations and costumes are suitably evocative and there is the odd intriguing scene that are too far and between.It is such a shame that the rest of 'The Iron Lady' falls flat. The supporting/secondary roles consist of spot and recognise the actor but the roles are too sketchily developed and under-utilised to make a proper impression. Phyllida Lloyd's talents as a theatre director don't translate here, here her direction is elephantine and the film is often haphazardly filmed and chaotically edited, especially the flashbacks. Thomas Newman's score is not among his best work, it's not awful certainly but it's more dreary than hypnotic and too derivative of other and better scores of his. The use of Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto is moving though.Narratively, the story is unfocused and chaotic. There is too much focus on the older Thatcher suffering from dementia, and the scenes which dominate the film are incredibly dull and repetitive, there was little interesting about them, they seemed to exploit this awful condition with little sympathy for it rather than make Thatcher interesting and says little about her as a person and it was very difficult to not tire of the film early on. Much more interesting events, especially what Thatcher was famous for and conflicts of the time, are either mentioned but glossed over, introduced but quickly given short shrift or omitted entirely. In the end, hardly anything is learnt about Thatcher as a person or what made her famous or important and we don't really care at the end of the day.Similarly, the script is also very sketchy and stilted with too much focus on the wrong things and more interesting elements severely underdeveloped or out of sight. It also seemed too careful not to offend, while it can be appreciated that the film didn't want to make Thatcher an angel or a villain or be one-sided it just felt like things were played too safe and like the writer Abi Morgan couldn't decide what her opinion on Thatcher was. She was a controversial figure certainly, but there was room for a complex characterisation and while Streep's performance is without complaint and that didn't really come.Overall, a pretty weak film saved by the acting, Streep is the star here and issues about her winning the Oscar are none. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Mrs Thatcher was a divisive figure in British life. I had little time for the woman but my Thatcherite friends would deem this bio-pic with an Oscar winning performance by Merly Streep to be a lampoon made by people who did not like her.It is a vapid film filled with montages and flashbacks as it goes through her period as Prime Minister, adored by forty percent of the nation and despised by the other sixty.It is framed as an elderly Mrs Thatcher in the first stages of senility and well into drunkenness as she has imaginary conversations with her beloved Denis who passed away a few years earlier.We see her taking her first steps towards a male dominated Westminster but skates over the fact that there were other females MPs and other female Cabinet Ministers before her.In fact the film plays rather loose with the facts, the most unsavoury one being the politician Airey Neave being blown up by Irish terrorists and Mrs Thatcher rushing to the scene of the incident.It is a pallid production that was only made as Oscar bait for Meryl Streep who in her customary way transforms herself as Mrs Thatcher but I never believed in her.