The highly-anticipated dramatisation of Israeli PM Golda Meir's leadership during the Yom Kippur war had its first showing last night at the Berlin Film Festival - and it was far from well-received.

Golda - starring Dame Helen Mirren in the title role of Golda Meir - follows the challenging and sometimes controversial decisions Israel's first and only female prime minister had to make during the 1973 war against Arab armies in the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights.

The film was controversial before it even started shooting, with Dame Maureen Lipman questioning why a Jewish woman was not cast to play the 'Iron Lady of Israel'.

It turned out that Mirren had posed that question to the director when she was cast, acknowledging Lipman's “utterly legitimate” complaint, but said the director was set on her playing the role, and she accepted.

Ahead of its scheduled cinematic release later this year, the film was screened last night at the Berlin Film Festival, but the reviews are not altogether positive.

From Mirren's prosthetics hiding her emotions and expressions, to a lack of compelling narrative and repetitive scenes, critics were not enthralled with the portrayal of the war that led to Egypt becoming the first Arab state to recognise Israel.

From the critics who were there, here is a roundup of the top reviews.

The Times - ★☆☆☆☆

The newspaper's one-star review is entitled, "Helen Mirren loses to the latex in this dismal biopic", and it does not get much better.

Film critic Kevin Maher writes that of all of Mirren's vast talents, "the ability to act her way out of a rubber mask is not one."

His review is sharply critical of the "layers of fatally inexpressive latex make-up," and writes that the audience gasped when they saw Golda's face for the first time.

He also criticises the lack of narrative in the film, saying that the war was reduced "to a couple of shady interiors, and repetitive scenes of Meir sitting around tables and fretting over the human cost of battle with her political sidekicks".

He bemoans the lack of Churchillian moments in the film, concluding: "This is no one’s finest hour."

Read the full review here.

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Golda Meir speaking at a press conference at the Churchill Hotel in London during the Socialist International meeting on 12th November 1973 - less than a month after the end of the Yom Kippur War (Photo by Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The Telegraph - ★★★☆☆

Tim Robey of The Telegraph is slightly more generous in his review. He, too, criticises the "lumpy facial prosthetics" worn by Mirren, but describes the film as "brisk and effective".

He writes that the "basics are present and correct", and praises Mirren's performance as "focused and impassioned", despite the prosthetic disaster.

He is more generous than The Times in his description of the film's narrative, writing: "The film is certainly not about brilliant Churchillian strategy – it’s about doubt and unimaginable stress, the griefs and crushing burdens of leadership."

Of the cinematic elements of the film, he writes that it "looks a bit drab, with some duff effects and uneven staging."

"But it has a businesslike running time, and doesn’t waste it," he concludes.

Read the full review here.

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Helen Mirren attending the "Golda" premiere at the 73rd Berlinale International Film Festival Berlin at Berlinale Palast on February 20, 2023 in Berlin, Germany (Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

The Guardian - ★★☆☆☆

The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw is somewhat more critical than The Times, writing that for a film about war, it is "bafflingly dull", adding that it is a "stately, stuffy and at times almost comatose TV-movie-type drama"

Bradshaw is also sharply critical of Mirren's prosthetics and wardrobe, writing that it "look[s] as if she is playing the Queen doing an impression of Richard Nixon".

He is critical of the lack of drama and the lack of "energy and presence" in the film's portrayal of the 'Iron Lady of Israel', concluding: "It’s such a lumbering, heavy, solemn film smothered by its own weighty self-consciousness."

Read the full review here.

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Israeli director Guy Nattiv and English actor Helen Mirren attending a photocall for the film "Golda" presented in the "Berlinale Special Gala" section of the Berlinale (Photo by Ronny Hartmann/AFP via Getty Images)

The Jerusalem Post - "Helen Mirren’s work will surely snag her an Oscar nod"

Although The Jerusalem Post did not give the film a star rating, you get the impression from its review that it would have received the full five.

Film critic Hannah Brown describes Mirren's performance as "extraordinary", writing: "If you didn’t know it was Mirren in the title role, you would never guess that it is the glamorous British actress [...] under all that makeup and prosthetics.

"She has been suitably de-glamorized so that she can pass as the down-to-earth politician who broke barriers as she led Israel in the 60s and 70s."

She goes on to describe Mirren's approximation of Meir's speech as "quite [brilliant] (tinged with a tiny bit of a Yiddish accent)", adding that she would deserve an Oscar for her performance.

Read the full review here.

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Director Guy Nattiv, Dame Helen Mirren and Lior Ashkenazi attending the "Golda" photocall during the 73rd Berlinale International Film Festival (Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

Variety - Mirren "brings the prime minister to flinty, vibrant life at a time when Israel faced an existential threat"

The legendary motion-picture newspaper Variety is also very positive about Mirren's portrayal of Golda Meir, writing that she acts "with deft skill and control beneath one of those startling transformative prosthetic makeup jobs."

The unnamed critic writes that "we can believe our eyes that this is the Iron Lady of Israel", praising the detail of Meir's appearance brought to life in the prosthetics, as well as Mirren's approximation of her accent.

The film is described as a "a tense and absorbing backroom" that makes you feel the "primal fear" of an existential threat.

Of British screenwriter Nicholas Martin and Israeli-American director Guy Nattiv, the critic writes that they do "a reasonably effective job of laying out the thorny battle complications of the Yom Kippur War".

However, it says that because the film is from the Israeli perspective, it fails to tackle the country's "long-simmering moral ambiguities", which is said to be a limitation, in spite of the film's "dynamism".

Read the full review here.