Michael Ledo It seems we can't just can't have a normal biographical movie anymore without flashbacks. The flashback style is done for the purpose of showing us how events in someone's past effected their later decisions. Seeing the retired senile Margaret Thatcher was really unnecessary to this film. Can you imagine a Reagan biography starting out with a senile Reagan not knowing he is no longer president and talking to dead people? Unfortunately the senility scenes are needed so we can get to know the character of Marget Thatcher because the main biography part is poorly done with an over abundance of "red meat" sound bites.To make matters worse, the film then employs this technique during the flashback so there is a flashback within the flashback.I liked the young Margaret Roberts (Alexandra Roach) growing up in a man's world where the expectations of women were to stay out of business and politics. Her bucking the system was inspirational and it would have been a better film had we seen more of this and less of Margaret thinking her husband was still alive.The meat of the film picks up when she is the Education Secretary of the conservative party. England is facing a union strike crippling the nation. Marget doesn't like her party's leadership and decides to run for the leader of the Conservative Party. She correctly places herself in the hands of professions who tweak her for national appeal, including working on her shrill voice...but she keeps the pearls.The movie relates to today. England was in a recession and people couldn't pay their mortgage. Margret wanted to cut government spending in the midst of a recession contrary to everyone else, including her own party who worries about re-election. I expected to see a "Paid for by Ron Paul" after that speech.For me, the film becomes watchable when Thatcher has to weigh her decision to go to war over the Falkland Islands. Streep gives us some wonderful performances. But when I see Matthew Marsh miscast as Alexander Haig, I have to ask, "What were they thinking?"I went into this film thinking "5 stars" but reality set in as they killed this film on the editing floor. Horrifically edited and badly written. Whose idea was it really to have Streep walk around in an old house coat with messed up hair looking acting like Edith Bunker? The scenes of Streep moving through a crowd of faces, speaking her thoughts was another idea that failed. The soundtrack during the file footage scenes was terrible. Streep had a few strong scenes, but not enough to save this film. My advice: read the book.No f-bombs, no sex, brief nudity on file footage.

elliothawittpalmer Hi guys, Firstly, I just have to begin by saying Merrol Street as Thatcher stirs up both lust and disgust within the soul, yet my marriage has never been better since I bought my wife this film for her birthday. This powerful film with a star-studded cast (Jim Broadbern as Denis, Olive Coalman as Carl, Richard. E Grent as Michael Heseltine (snake)) taught me and my housewench (a joke, y'all) that there is, within us all, both an Iron Lady and a Miss Margaret Roberts (cover the butter). I would have given this film a 10/10 had I not watched the special features, where much to my chagrin I discovered that management had snuck in a Geordie to play young Margaret. In light of her views on Northerns, this seemed to me a cold, calculated insult to her memory. That aside, I was won over by the fabulous editing - the panning and zooming gave me severe whiplash. My favourite scene has to be when Airy Knees dies, toupée intact. I love the way she screams: passionate, gut-wrenching, haunting. She's got my Oscar!

Dave This drama film is a biopic of Margaret Thatcher. Most of the film is set in what was then the present day - with her as an octogenarian who had to retire from public life and is suffering from advanced dementia. There are flashbacks to various points in her life.I don't know why the makers chose to centre the film on her old age - the least interesting part of her life. The flashbacks give little context - and show far too little of her life prior to her becoming a politician. The flashbacks miss out crucial years and important points in her political career as well. A biopic should show an overview of the subject's whole life - and should be able to be understood and enjoyed by viewers from various backgrounds. This film is so inadequate that few viewers will know significantly more about her after seeing it than they knew before they saw it. In order to follow what's going on, you have to already know a lot about Thatcher - and people already knowledgeable about her won't learn much from this. To make matters worse, there are some significant historical inaccuracies in the film.The only reason that I haven't given this one is that Meryl Streep's performance is good.

john_meyer This film is told from the perspective of Thatcher when she was a doddering, senile old woman. This would work if used as a starting point, but as the film grinds on, you eventually realize that THAT is all the movie is about: Margaret Thatcher as a senile old woman remembering, in fits and starts, various disjointed and isolated memories of her time as Britain's first female prime minister.The director and writer made no attempt to provide any insight into how Thatcher actually made any of her decisions. Also missing was any sense of how the events she attempted to shape actually came to be or, in many cases, any description of what those events really were. As one example, the Falklands conflict just pops up in one scene, with no prologue or explanation. Then, in the next scene, without any explanation, she decides to fight a war.As another example, bombs go off at various points in the movie, without any explanation. Even more inexplicably, after her residence is bombed, there are no subsequent scenes that follow up on this dramatic and troubling scene.The entire film is like this, with each scene having nothing much to do with anything that has come before. In a word, this film is haphazard.Having watched this movie, I know nothing more about Margaret Thatcher; nothing whatsoever about the British conservative movement of the 1980s; and nothing about how Thatcher changed Britain and the world.This is a movie that is about one thing: Meryl Streep's incredible impersonation of Thatcher. It is nothing more than that: there is no plot; no beginning, middle, or end; no characters that anyone could possibly care about; and no explanation whatsoever for anything the main character says or does.When the credits thankfully finally appeared, I cursed the director and writer of this movie for wasting my time, wasting the talents of a great actress, and for totally failing to tell us anything about one of the most remarkable and important leaders of the 20th century.Skip this movie: you will miss nothing.