When I settled in to watch Steve McQueen’s latest film Blitz, I expected a stirring and dramatic portrayal of the resilience of Londoners under sustained Nazi bombing. Instead, I was served a two-hour lecture on race relations—a clunky, heavy-handed, and, frankly, badly executed one at that.

I should have known, based on Steve McQueen’s previous work, but I was bamboozled by the marketing. The trailer bears no resemblance to the actual meat of the film.

If my Grandma was still alive, I would have to tell her that the stories she told me about the Blitz spirit were nothing more than a myth, if Blitz was to be believed.

I’ve looked at a few critic’s reviews of this film and the general consensus seems to be that McQueen should be applauded for telling a lesser-known side to this period of British history; an alternative to all those other boys-adventure, propaganda films.

The thing about those other films is that they are largely from the 40s, 50s and 60s. There are generations of people who may not have seen them. Blitz could be their first introduction to this story. It seems irresponsible to tell it this way. This perspective might have worked better as a documentary, where it could have been backed up by research from reputable historians.

Maybe I would even half-agree with the critics if the film was at least better made, and had a semblance of balance.

The character development is terrible, full of gross caricatures. The film paints a grim portrait of humanity, with the majority of characters portrayed as heartless opportunists. While the black characters are portrayed as noble victims, a large number of the white characters are self-serving and cruel. Even when you think you’ve found a genuinely kind and selfless character, it turns out to be a cynical trick.

There’s a section of the film that suddenly turns into Oliver Twist. As much as I like Stephen Graham and Kathy Burke, that whole section of the movie should have been left on the cutting room floor. It’s ridiculous.

Later, the film turns into Titanic. It’s one of the few genuinely dramatic scenes, but it only lends to the idea that it’s a complete mess of a film.

The acting is ropey, at best, and I’m not just talking about the kids, but the kids are the worst. Background child actors can get away with it but you would expect more from the lead. The poor kid displays absolutely no range or personality. Maybe this is by design. Perhaps we are supposed to believed that the lack of any kind of emotion is the character’s way of dealing with trauma. Perhaps. For me, it was either bad writing, bad acting, or a combination of both.

The sound editing is also atrocious. Music and sounds intended to heighten tension were simply grating.

The writing and dialogue went from cheesy to bad. It doesn’t help when it’s set in the east end of London. I half expected Dick Van Dyke to make an appearance.

Much of it felt like it was made by a first-year film student who had just learned about the “evils of the British empire”. No room for nuance here.

And yet, in the midst of all this, there were flashes of genuine drama. A few scenes captured the terror and tension of wartime London pretty well. These moments hinted at what Blitz could have been, had it not been bogged down by its moralising and amateurish execution.

I did learn something new. I wasn’t aware that the London underground stations were only opened as shelters after pressure from the local community. I had assumed opening them would have been straight out of the emergency planning book. Near the beginning, the films shows a bunch of jobsworths refusing to open stations with no explanation of why. You have to do your own research to find out that the authorities had genuine concerns about potential bombings trapping civilians underground.

In the end, Blitz isn’t the epic the trailer would have you believe. It’s more akin to a Ken Loach-style social-realist lecture, but without the authenticity or craft. There’s a difference between challenging national myths and outright dismantling them in such a ham-fisted way.

For all its pretensions, Blitz ends up feeling like a turkey—a missed opportunity to re-tell an important story.