“Golda” is a reminder of what a brilliant and charismatic leader, in this case a chain-smoking elderly woman aka “the Iron Lady of Israeli politics,” Golda Meir (Helen Mirren), means to a country fighting for its life. The film takes on more meaning at a time when Ukraine is in such a dire fight against the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and his army. “Golda” mentions in its opening the Six-Day War of 1967, which ended with Israel defeating a coalition of Arab armies and gaining territory four times its original size, creating a lasting resentment among the Arab world.

“Golda” begins a la “Oppenheimer” with a political investigation into actions taken by Prime Minister Meir during the latter Yom Kippur War of 1973. A frail, but grim-looking Meir (we learn that on top of everything else, she is receiving cobalt radiation treatments for cancer during the conflict), faces a group of nameless white-haired men who want to know why she did what she did and obviously second-guess her choices. Meir will later recall how as a child in Ukraine, she and her family dreaded visits to their village by drunken and anti-Semitic Cossacks.

Like Christopher Nolan (“Oppenheimer”), Academy Award-winning director Guy Nattiv (the 2018 short “Skin”) slips back and forth in time between the investigation and the war itself. We are introduced to the excitable, eye-patch-sporting Defense Minster Moshe Dayan (Rami Heuberger), the beefy, glory-seeking soldier Ariel Sharon (Ohad Knoller) and Defense Chief of Staff David “Dado” Elazar (Lior Ashkenazi). Meir is aided by Lou Kaddar (the fine French actor Camille Cottin of “Call My Agent!”), who is always by her side. Due no doubt to financial constraints, “Golda” is a war movie without war. We hear about battles, tank battles especially, through tense and at times terrifying communications between soldiers on the ground and the Israeli Command. It works.

Mirren, who has been criticized for playing a Jew (Meir was previously played by the great Swedish actor Ingrid Bergman in the 1982 made-for-TV biopic “A Woman Called Golda”), wields her Zippo lighter like a Walther PPK. She transforms Meir into another one of her heroic screen personages, including both Queens Elizabeth and DSU Jane Tennison of the iconic TV series “Prime Suspect.” Mirren’s Golda stares at a glowing, faceted lens firing gamma rays into her abdomen like its just another opponent. With her prosthetic nose Mirren will incite the “Jewface” shamers.

But she plays the role with such dignity, ferocity and wisdom she defies them. Her Golda’s instructions to her commanders is to, “Tear them limb from limb,” adding, “This won’t be over in a week” (it took 19 days). She relies on her gut. When “Dado” offers to resign after a defeat, she tells him in to “Snap out of it.” We see perhaps one too many times the Nautilus shell-like stairway she uses to get to her office and the rooftop from which she watches birds swarming.

Meir calls U.S. Secretary of State Kissinger (Liev Schreiber) “Henry” and reminds us that, “All political careers end in failure.” Israeli director Nattiv and his editor Arik Lahav-Leibovich interweave archival footage with newly-filmed sequences with great skill, including a visit by the real Meir to the front. Almost all of Meir’s pronouncements are adorned with a plume of cigarette smoke. On the soundtrack we hear both Leonard Cohen’s “Who By Fire,” composed by Cohen during a 1973 visit to the war’s front lines, and Purcell’s “Dido’s Lament.” Mirren is glorious, again.

(“Golda” contains “pervasive smoking” and mature themes)

Rated PG-13. At the AMC Boston Common, Coolidge Corner Theater, Landmark Kendall Square and suburban theaters. Grade: A-