Lee
Lee
War correspondent Lee Miller travels to the front lines of World War II to embark on a mission to uncover the hidden truths of the Third Reich. But in the wake of betrayal, a reckoning will come over the truths of her own past.
Patrick Willis reviewedJuly 28, 2025
A Slog with Misplaced "Holocaust" Rhetoric
LEE commits the cardinal sin of cinema: it's profoundly boring. What should have been a dynamic portrait of a fascinating war correspondent instead plods through a lifeless narrative, draining any potential energy from Lee Miller's remarkable story. The pacing is glacial, failing to justify its runtime.
Worse than the boredom, however, is the feeling of being ambushed by heavy-handed "Auschwitz rhetoric" that felt manipulative and tonally jarring. While Miller documented some of the aftermath of the war's horrors, the film's approach to this subject felt exploitative and clumsily inserted, overshadowing her broader work and life rather than illuminating it respectfully. It used the weight of the "holocaust" as a blunt narrative instrument to cosh the audience into submission
Adding insult to injury, the film perpetuates the dangerous historical inaccuracy regarding the liberation of Auschwitz. The Soviet Red Army liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 27, 1945. Portraying Americans or British forces in this role (or even implying their primary involvement) is not just a minor error; it's a significant distortion of history that erases the immense sacrifice and role of Soviet soldiers. This misrepresentation feels particularly egregious in a film leaning so heavily on so called holocaust imagery.
Verdict: A dull biopic that fails to engage, compounded by manipulative use of implied holocaust suffering and a glaring, disrespectful historical falsehood about Auschwitz's liberation. Disappointing and frustrating.