Director: Sam Mendes
Screenplay: Sam Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns
Starring: George MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman, Mark Strong, Andrew Scott, Claire Duburcq, Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch
Running Time: 119 minutes
Genre: War
France, April 1917: The Germans have pulled back from a sector in the Western Front. However, they have not retreated, and have in fact made a strategic withdrawal to a new defensive line form where they plan to overwhelm attacking British forces with artillery. With the field telephone lines cut, two soldiers, Schofield (MacKay) and Blake (Chapman) are ordered to undertake a perilous mission across No Man's Land to hand deliver a message ordering a battalion to call off their attack which is planned for the next morning, and which could potentially cost the lives of 1,600 men, including Blake's brother.
This film is made to look as if it has all been shot in one continuous take, which sometimes seems frustratingly gimmicky, but sometimes is really effective. The soldiers trudge along seemingly endless stretches of blasted, desolate country, with sudden bursts of dynamic action. There are moments of real teeth-grinding suspense, and some breath-taking images, particularly the nighttime trek across a burning ruined city, that looks like a journey across Hell, and the scenes in the trenches are extremely claustrophobic. There are dull moments, and sometimes the real-time approach means that you never really see much about the character's past and personality, and this does have the problem that a lot of films have when they are sold on the back of one particular technical achievement, in that it becomes more about the technique than the story. However, more often than not it succeeds as a powerful, harrowing war movie.
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