A film that constantly undermines what you've just watched including the premise of the film itself.

Rating: 2/10 (28 January 2020)

I watched this film on Sunday and I'll admit I started falling out of love with it as soon as the plot was established as I found it hard to believe, but then multiple things kept happening which further took me out of believing and being invested in the film and into downright incredulity most of the time. Something which I could perhaps have got behind if the movie acknowledged its dreaminess, but as it wants to be judged as a "based on real events" type basis, I'm afraid its a hard no from me on believability.
So those events, which others have remarked upon: Getting blown up and surviving without a scratch, but which destabilises a supposedly well built German bunker, Star Wars mine shaft jump, who milked the cow, why is that cow still alive, why aren't they concerned that it probably means someone is around, helping the German pilot (not the last time these two are shown to be terrible soldiers), I didn't know enough about Blake to care for him before he died and I was glad when he did because the German pilot stabbing a naive Brit for pulling him out the plane was what he deserved it was just stupid, the truck fulls of Brits turning up at that moment (more on that later), Schofield not jumping in the water as soon as the sniper starts shooting, Schofield briefly becoming an incredible soldier and hitting the sniper before going back to being a terrible one, didn't roll a grenade in through the sniper door, weird back of the head injury that knocks him out, but again doesn't kill him, then disappears, more bad soldiery running down the middle of the Main Street of the town that you know has Germans in, not shooting at the soldier that comes out of the fire, just running away and being missed multiple times from extremely close range, not got a lot to say about the baby scene except he briefly loses sight of his mission, why do the Germans seem to not be looking for him in that period, again trusting a German soldier not to speak even after the lesson of the pilot, I was fully expecting him to stab the other German, but then he just runs past him... the waterfall in the river, if its the same river as the downed bridge crossing couldn't he have just crossed it at the point he eventually gets out and skipped the town? how did the 1600 soldiers get across the river? Why are they set up in the field instead of clearing and holding the nearby town? At the singing scene why are there no sentries, you are deep in what was German territory a matter of hours ago guys! we've just seen there might be snipers, Lastly, holy cow thats an impressive brand new trench, are you sure you haven't got any supply lines? Because that sort of set up looks like it would have supply lines. Getting up out the trench... meh I was gone at that point.
So on to the point no one has made yet. The movie constantly undermining itself. Lets go back to the beginning, a trench full of Brits seemingly waiting to go over the top at any moment. We go through no mans land, but the German trenches are empty, so actually we worried for no reason, and the men really should have been stood down, forward to the British trucks... WHERE DID THEY COME FROM? Did someone build a road through no mans land in a couple of hours? Up to that point we are believing our two soldiers are alone behind enemy lines. But actually they aren't behind enemy lines because the trucks are there and everything is so casual! its clear they know there are no Germans around, so what was the opening of the film even for? There was ZERO danger apart from a booby trap, they should have driven there. OK Why does Schofield run into the town? As I said earlier if its the same river its really stupid, but I could go with it being a different bit of river. Back to the singing scene, everything is safe again. The way those soldiers are, its as if they are behind the line (which they sort of are) not part of some advance.
OK the final bit, we are told at the start that they must halt the attack before its starts to prevent a massacre as the Germans have amassed a far superior force (this is the premise of the film, then we are told the brother went off in the first wave, but here he is, back from the first wave, alive. So how bad could this attack and the German response even have been? It would have given the film some poignancy back if Schofield wandered round the aid station, found the other dead brothers surname on a dog tag, went off to his tree and wondered about the futility of war.