From Fionnuala Halligan‘s Screen Daily review of Golda (2.20.23):
“When an iconic actor portrays an iconic figure, the success or failure of the project tends to depend on the power of the performance blasting away the wigs and prosthetics. Helen Mirren achieves all that while playing Israeli politician Golda Meir. But, in Golda, director Guy Nattiv and writer Nicholas Martin haven’t quite kept up their end of the bargain.
“Dropping the audience into the start of the 1973 Yom Kippur war with the chain-smoking caretaker premier, the film is a tense story of a woman and her generals around a cabinet table over the course of the conflict. Endless cigarette smoke, overflowing ashtrays, maps, a fat suit, a wiry wig, hairy eyebrows, orthopaedic shoes — but who was Golda Meir? The film prefers to avoid her as a human being, swerving into her politics and replaying the war from the perspective of her military cabinet over 10 charged days.”