Director: Phyllida Lloyd

Cast: Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Olivia Colman, Alexandra Roach, Harry Lloyd

Yes, the first female British prime minister undeniably paved the way for the ascension of women to positions of power but no, she wasn't a feminist.

She surrounded herself with men and enacted some hard-line, conservative policies, which leftists have used as examples of the dangers of Milton Friedman free market economics.

Now she is an old woman, a widow and, by all accounts, in the throes of senility - not in the over-the-top, drunken, twisted, rubber-faced way depicted in the puppet show Spitting Image - but closer to the fragile, difficult and haunted woman we are greeted with in the opening of Phyllida Lloyd's adventurous but flawed biopic.

Lloyd, the director of Mamma Mia gives us a film that is more about the tragedy of dementia and loneliness than it is about one of the most controversial political figures of the 20th century.

While Meryl Streep in the role of Thatcher gives a strong, nuanced and pitch-perfect impersonation of the Iron Lady, the film flounders when it comes to analysing Thatcher's political career and the psychology that influenced her decisions.

Structurally the film, written by Abi Morgan, creator of The Hour, is far more intelligent and intriguing than the dull conventions used by Clint Eastwood in his J Edgar Hoover biopic, but when it comes to the politics, Lloyd treats the material like a montage in a musical, rushing through scenes of Thatcher keeping a stiff upper-lip in the face of striking miners and panic on the streets of London before whizzing off to the comforting arms of her husband Denis.

Oscar-nominated Streep in Oscar-nominated make-up gives a brave and excellent performance.

She is ably supported by Jim Broadbent, who plays Denis in old age and ghost-form, but her performance is dangerously strong for a film in which the psychological and political stances are far too tepid for such a gold mine of a subject.

TheIron Lady, therefore, ends up being an unsatisfying historical biopic made worth watching only for the excellence of Streep's performance, which, like her turn as Julia Child in Julie and Julia, showcases her ability to approach each character with an empathy that lifts her performances above mere mimicry.

WHAT OTHERS SAY:

I'M NOT entirely certain Meryl Streep does go beyond mere impersonation, but also not certain there is anything 'mere' about it in any case. Technically brilliant mimicking of this standard is much rarer than run-of-the-mill good acting. - Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

"... IT IS calculatedly unkind to take a real, living person and portray that person as demented, which this film does. Either such a portrayal is false and therefore indefensible, or it is true, in which case the poor victim can't answer back. The making of the film is therefore exploitative, and is bound to hurt anyone close to her, above all, her family. The film should not have been made in Lady Thatcher's lifetime. - Charles Moore, The Daily Telegraph