- Rick Groen, Globe and Mail, January 20, 2012
Yes, Streep is wondrous as usual, but her superpowers have been squandered here.
- Tom Long, Detroit News, January 13, 2012
The Iron Lady is a performance in search of a film.
- , Globe and Mail, January 13, 2012
Often "The Iron Lady" relies on montages to get to - and plow through - historic high points.
- Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post, January 13, 2012
[Streep's] performance overpowers the movie it's in - a perfectly executed triple axel that renders everything else just featureless ice.
- Ann Hornaday, Washington Post, January 13, 2012
Streep's performance is so true and so uncannily accurate, so full and so complete in its understanding, that she is fascinating every second she is onscreen.
- Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle, January 12, 2012
Streep, no fan of Thatcher, nicely undercuts the poignancy of her current condition with flashbacks that reveal her brittle arrogance in office.
- J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader, January 12, 2012
Everything Streep does here is a seismic act of theater. If she so much as tilts her head, the earth tilts with it. She doesn't simply overwhelm this thin historic biography - and the other actors around her - she detonates it.
- Wesley Morris, Boston Globe, January 12, 2012
The portrait that Streep delivers in Phyllida Lloyd's impressionistic biopic is astonishing.
- Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer, January 12, 2012
A stylized biography of one of the most powerful women in politics, portrayed by the greatest actress of our time, that asks more questions than it answers.
- Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic, January 12, 2012
Yes, it's a strangely de-politicized portrait of Britain's first female prime minister. But what's there is actually enough.
- Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune, January 12, 2012
You have to be very talented to work with Meryl Streep. It also helps to know how to use her. "The Iron Lady" fails in both of these categories.
- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, January 12, 2012
Streep gets under the skin of one of the 20th century's most dynamic and also most contained personalities.
- Peter Howell, Toronto Star, January 12, 2012
Streep and Broadbent are entirely watchable, and Thatcher's story, even in its vague and watered-down state, is inherently interesting.
- Eric D. Snider, Film.com, January 06, 2012
Streep is simply brilliant as Thatcher in every way: her voice, her posture, her movements and facial expressions, her frightening and sudden imperiousness.
- David Sexton, This is London, January 06, 2012
Streep is Oscar-worthy here, as she almost always is, which is hardly a surprise, and the historic subject matter is fascinating whichever way your politics may lean.
- Connie Ogle, Miami Herald, January 12, 2012
While the rest of "The Iron Lady" fades quickly in memory, Meryl Streep's performance in the title role remains startlingly present.
- Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times, January 12, 2012
- , Sight and Sound, June 18, 2012
Altogether this is a much softened and declawed portrait of the most divisive prime minister of recent times.
- Philip Kemp, Sight and Sound, January 10, 2012
Streep gets everything right.
- Nigel Andrews, Financial Times, January 05, 2012
