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For Meryl Streep's latest performance, she takes on the role of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in the movie "The Iron Lady." As one would expect, Streep is sensational here. She embodies Thatcher and she's riveting to watch.

Unfortunately, her performance is the only good thing here, as the movie is sort of a mess. Director Phyllidia Lloyd, who directed Streep in the abysmal movie version of "Mamma Mia," looks at moments in Thatcher's life and there's no cohesiveness to the entire story.

It starts out with an older Thatcher who's beginning to suffer the affects of Alzheimer's. She's a shell of her former self, not wielding the great power she once had in government and not even in control of her own facilities.

The movie offers up shallow, brief snapshots of Thatcher's career — her invasion of the Falkland Islands, her getting elected to public office for the first time and her consultants remolding her image as she runs for prime minister. But they're all hollow glimpses.

There is even a look at a young Thatcher, played by Alexandra Roach, and how she falls in love with her husband-to-be, played in later years by Jim Broadbent.

But none of it really adds up. The interesting story about Margaret Thatcher, which the director along with writer Abi Morgan miss, is how she broke through gender and class barriers to become the first female prime minister of Great Britain in an unaccepting, male-dominated world. But there's little insight into how exactly she pulled it all off or what makes this woman tick.

What we're left with is a bland, disjointed hodgepodge of a movie that doesn't work well as a biopic, a character study or a historical document. It's all over the map and all that's worth watching, in the end, is a great performance by Meryl Streep.