Golda (2023)

Directed by Guy Nattiv. Starring Helen Mirren, Liev Schreiber, Rami Heuberger, Camille Cottin, Lior Ashkenazi, Dominic Mafham. [PG-13]

Compliant, inert portrait of the “Iron Lady” of Israel, Golda Meir (Mirren), during one of the most trying episodes of her life and career: intelligence reports warning her that Israel was the precipice of attack by Egypt and Syria, which would kick off the Yom Kippur War of 1973. More of a simplified history lesson than a biopic/character study, with every interaction and meditation centered on the crisis at hand, and no wiggle room for personal detail or intuitive quirks, unless you count the running motif of Meir puffing on a cigarette at nearly every turn. As always, all that smoke looks great on camera, but it’s overused for effect—a billowing digital swirl of the stuff is even used as a stylistic device to merge with the smoke on the battlefields where her thoughts lie—and viewers deserve more insight into the mind of the prime minister than that. Mirren is hard to physically recognize, so don’t be surprised if the makeup artists earn an Oscar nod, since the Academy tends to eat up that kind of stuff (Liev Schreiber, however, hardly disappears into the unpersuasive skin of Henry Kissinger).

45/100